
Class B R.\ a I 

Book }C5 

Copyright N" . 



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CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 



CATHOLIC 
AND PROTESTANT 



BY 
FREDERICK JOSEPH KINSMAN, D.D., LL.D. 

BISHOP OF DELAWARE 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 

LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 

1913 



:b'^ 



\Z>\ 



v<^ 



COPYRIGHT, I9I3, BY 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 



PUBLISHED, SEPTEMBER, I913 



THE'PLIMPTONTRESS 
NORWOOD'MASS'U'S'A 



/ 



)CI.A;J5178 6 



t ^ 



TO 
WILLIAM THOMAS MANNING 



PREFACE 

The papers contained in this book were read before 
a Conference for Church Workers in the Cathedral of 
St. John the Divine, New York, July 1-4, 1913. They 
are printed at the request of those who heard them in 
the form in which they were delivered in spite of bearing 
marks of haste and the pressure under which they were 
written. The short papers given in the Appendix were 
written for the Trinity Parish Record, New York, and 
are reprinted by permission of the Editor. 

The author is under obhgations to the Reverend 
Wilham T. Manning, D.D., Rector of Trinity Parish, 
New York, and to Mrs. Marie E. J. Hobart for help- 
ful criticisms, and to the Reverend William Christy 
Patterson, to Deaconess Knapp, and to his sister, for 
assistance in preparing manuscript for the press. 

FREDERICK JOSEPH KINSMAN 
BISHOP OF DELAWARE 

BiRCHMEBE, Transfiguration, 1913. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I The Sacramental Principle 3 

II Catholic and Protestant 29 

III Sacramental Character 62 

IV The Ideals of American Christianity 73 

APPENDIX 

The Church, One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic . . 99 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 



THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 

The sacramental principle means the expression 
of the spiritual through the material, the connection 
and interaction of the human and the Divine. It is 
based on the principle of creation whereby the material 
world became the expression of the thought of God, 
and whereby in particular man was created in God's 
image. By its origin humanity was an outward and 
visible sign of inward and spiritual life pertaining to 
the Godhead. In line with this law or principle of 
creation, and as ultimate development of this law, was 
the great sacrament of all, the Incarnation of the Son 
of God. When in the man Jesus the Word of God 
was made flesh and dwelt among us, the innermost 
spiritual became intelligible by human expression, and 
the eternal was translated into comprehensible terms 
of the life of time. In our Lord dwelt "the fulness 
of the Godhead in bodily form," so that He was "the 
effulgence of the Divine glory, the express image of the 
Person" of God the Father. "He that hath seen Me 
hath seen the Father." He was truly and perfectly 
Divine; and at the same time He was truly and per- 
fectly human. There were always these two sides of 
the truth about Him; and neglect of either of them 
not only marred the symmetry of truth, but also had 
disastrous practical consequences. This is the les- 



4 THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 

son of warning given by the history of the Church's 
struggles with heresy. 

Men often wilfully isolate and emphasize one side 
of a double truth, because for various reasons they 
are determined to see one side only; and by so doing 
they miss the meaning, and fail to realize the full 
consequences, of the truth with which they are con- 
cerned. In these days we do not like to talk about 
orthodoxy and heresy; or if we do, we are apt to assume 
that orthodoxy is only another name for the bigotry 
of ignorance, and that heresy is synonymous with 
fearless devotion to truth. We ought, however, to 
look at the right meaning of the words, and behind 
the words to the things they represent, and to recog- 
nize that the things they represent have vital and 
eternal issues. "Orthodoxy" means right thinking; 
and "heresy" is wilfulness. Right thinking is neces- 
sary for any right action. In the pursuit of every 
science there is a right thinking, the result of the spirit 
of obedience, necessary for success, and a wilfulness 
which above all things loves its own way and shuts 
its eyes to truth it does not happen to fancy, which 
spells failure. The two things may, or may not, be 
given the old-fashioned names "orthodoxy" and 
"heresy"; but if not, they must be given others of 
identical significance. The difference between them 
is not so much intellectual as moral, not so much in 
degree of apprehension as in quality of disposition, not 
relating so much to actual grasp of truth as to attitude 
toward truth. The heretical temper may show itself 
in defence of the articles of the Creed; and the spirit 
of orthodoxy may coexist with ignorance. All depends 



THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 5 

6n line of development, not on degree of progress. 
The one is self -centered, the other God-centered: the 
one seeks to express and vindicate its own views, the 
other, only to submit itself to the authority of our 
Lord. The one declares defiantly, "We are they that 
ought to speak; who is lord over us?" the other says 
simply, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the 
words of eternal life." In every pursuit of truth these 
two tempers show themselves; and it is only the 
temper which seeks to control Nature by obeying 
Nature, which conforms to law instead of defying 
it, which looks up to God for guidance, that can 
learn the secrets of growth and progress. "In Thy 
light shall we see light." 

The history of the Church affords many examples 
of heretical tendencies in ultra-orthodox circles. Most 
famous heretics were not assailants of Christian truth 
as a whole, men who had assumed an utterly un- 
christian standpoint, but zealous Christians whose 
orthodoxy was narrow and one-sided, who out of 
devotion to one truth, or to one side of truth, reso- 
lutely refused to look at any other. The difference 
between orthodoxy and heresy is often chiefly that 
between patience and impatience, between accept- 
ance of the diflScult task of viewing truth as a whole 
and of recognizing and relating its contrasts, and the 
irritability which thinks that devotion to some one 
truth necessitates denial or obscuration of every other, 
which exults over "things more plain than truth," 
refusing to see that life is made up of "things more 
true than plain." 

The Christian attitude toward our Lord recognizes 



6 THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 

and constantly applies the sacramental principle. 
Truth as it comes from Him has always something of 
the twofoldness which belongs to Himself. It is truly 
human and truly Divine; and its parallel principles and 
problems call for reverent patience. The attitude of 
mind which invariably leads to error and inefficiency, 
pounces on a pet principle, isolates and exaggerates it, 
and is hysterically blind to every other. There is no 
lie like a half-truth; no heretic so much of a nuisance 
as a petty-minded fraction of orthodoxy. Christian 
history largely consists of the working out on a world- 
wide scale of the sacramental principle: and many 
errors and evils are illustrations of grasp of only one 
side of this. At the risk of being tedious, let me call 
attention to some of the more familiar examples. 

1. Most obviously is this true in Christology. Our 
Lord is true God and true Man. Over and over again 
defenders of His Godhead minimized and denied His 
humanity; and defenders of His complete humanity 
have ignored and explained away His Godhead. In 
every case speculative errors have resulted in loss of 
grip of the practical meaning of the faith. There 
have been flagrantly naughty heretics and super- 
latively pious heretics; but both alike have dismem- 
bered the truth and failed to realize the fulness of 
life in the faith. 

Some Christological heresies have denied the Divine 
in Christ. Arius, confident in his logic and common- 
sense, convinced of the truth of our Lord's oneness 
with creation, could not be made to admit that He was 
fully and eternally God. He was not ready to learn 
from our Lord or from Scripture, but, vehement to 



THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 7 

establish and impose his own theories, so overpressed 
a metaphor as to deny the truth behind it. In his 
wilful defiance of authority and resolute maintenance 
of his own views, he is the classic example of the hereti- 
cal temper. Nestorius likewise, keen to defend the 
reality of our Lord's human example, the complete- 
ness of His human experience, but stupidly impatient 
at eflForts to relate these truths to others equally im- 
portant, could not be led to regard Him as more than 
most highly inspired of prophets, and would never 
admit that the new-born son of Mary could be incar- 
nate God. He had hold of important truth; but he 
let even more important slip from his grasp. 

On the other hand, there were those who denied our 
Lord's humanity. ApoUinaris, special champion of 
the Divinity against Arius, refused to admit in Him 
a truly human will or rational soul. The ApoUinarian 
Christ lacked the crowning characteristic of humanity. 
He was wholly God, but only partly Man. The 
motive of this teaching was reverence, since the denial 
of will was intended to protect our Lord's sinlessness; 
but it mutilated truth to avoid difficulty. From the 
same motive Eutyches went to even greater lengths, 
denying the existence in our Lord of anything human 
at all. "The humanity," he said, "was lost in the 
Divinity as a drop of vinegar is swallowed in the 
ocean." The Eutychian Christ was merely God in 
masquerade. That was a comparatively simple theory, 
free from certain causes of perplexity; but it did not 
conform to the facts of the Gospels, nor to the interpre- 
tation of them given in the Epistles. 

These men represented great schools of thought in 



8 THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 

the Christian Church, or rather the tendencies of these 
schools developing without check and control. In 
the fourth and fifth centuries the chief theological 
centres were Alexandria and Antioch. Alexandria, 
seat of the famous Catechetical School, the home of 
mystical theology, the see in which Arianism had 
been fought most fiercely, which had given to the 
Church Athanasius and Cyril, was by temper and 
tradition the strenuous defender of the Divine in 
Christ. Antioch, city of the Christian name, a centre 
for practical theology, based on a sound and critical 
study of Scripture, numbering among its sons scholars 
and saints of whom Chrysostom is best known, was 
traditional defender of His complete humanity. But 
in both schools were those who could not preserve 
the balance of faith. Arius and Nestorius had many 
followers in Antioch; the Monophy sites flourished 
in Egypt. Both schools and many great teachers 
needed the discipline and deliberate instruction of the 
Church as a whole, which was given in the Christo- 
logical teaching of the Creeds and the Definition of 
Chalcedon. 

"He is complete in His own nature and complete 
in ours," enunciated Leo: and this thesis the Chalce- 
donian fathers elaborated with majestic, evenly bal- 
anced harmony. "Following therefore the holy Fathers, 
we confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, 
and all in harmony teach the same thing; that He is 
perfect in Godhead, perfect in manhood, truly God 
and truly Man, of one substance with the Father as 
touching the Godhead, and of one substance with us as 
touching His Manhood, begotten of the Father before 



THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 9 

all worlds as touching the Godhead, in these last days, 
the same born of the Virgin Mary, the God-bearer, 
as touching His Manhood, one and the same Christ, 
Son, Lord, the Only -begotten, recognized in two natures 
without confusion, change, division or separation." 
The chief thing to be noticed in this classic definition 
of the Christian faith concerning the Person of Christ 
is its parallelism, the equal assertion of both sides of 
the complex truth, of the human and of the Divine. 
No effort is made to relate or reconcile them. There 
is no hint at the solution of diflBculties suggested by 
the coexistence of the two: but, following the Fathers, 
the Scriptures, the words of our Lord Himself, the two 
sides of the jtruth are accepted and set down side by 
side. Witness is given to the whole truth, even if 
there be suggestion of insoluble puzzles. The chief 
thing which the council sought to do was to bear wit- 
ness, not to explain. The Church discharged its duty 
by being simply honest rather than profoundly philo- 
sophical. In the controversies of the conciliar period, 
it was straightforward loyalty, rather than intellec- 
tual subtlety, which reached a solution accepted by 
the conscience of the Church as bearing true witness 
to the faith. The sum and substance of the Church's 
teaching about Christ hes in its insistence that His 
Person is sacramental. His humanity which all men 
can touch and understand is the revelation and media- 
tion of the Nature and Being of God. "He was made 
human, that we might be made Divine." 

It is important to note that the dissections of truth, 
branded as heresies by the General Councils, repre- 
sented indifference not merely to definitions of specula- 



10 



THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 



tive theologians, but to the teaching of Holy Scripture. 
Moreover, the logical consequences were denials of 
the practical advantages which Christianity claims to 
give: If God became man, there has been in the life 
of that man Who was God Incarnate, a revelation of 
God; and further, there has been through God's 
undergoing human experience proof of His perfect 
sympathy with men, in both ways demonstration of 
the completeness of God's love. If the Incarnation 
be a fact, God has spoken to man and has shared his 
life, and also has taught in a way that cannot be 
misunderstood, that men may speak to Him and 
share His life. The practical consequences may be 
summarized in the two words revelation and sym- 
pathy. 

If the contention of Arius, Nestorius, and other 
mere humanitarians be true, there has been no such 
revelation. If Jesus was merely highest of creatures, 
greatest of prophets, best of men, though his life may 
be taken by some as exhibition of the highest planes 
of humanity, it cannot be taken as revelation of God. 
If he were not really Divine, man is as far from knowl- 
edge of God since his life as before. Moreover, consid- 
ering his claims, it will never be possible for many to 
take satisfaction in him as ideal man. His words 
and works recorded in the Gospels imply claim to be 
more than human. Hence those who shrink from 
the doctrine of the Incarnation must always assume 
either that he misrepresented his true nature, or that 
he has been misrepresented wholly by the only authori- 
tative accounts we have of him. ''Either God, or 
fraud;" and if not God, then no revelation. 



THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 11 

"Naught but this, the living fulness 

Of His own Immanuel name. 
Links His human truth and pureness 

With the splendors of His claim: 
He that took the sovereign station 

Where no angel durst come nigh. 
Would be neither saint nor prophet, 

Were He less than God most high." 

On the other hand, if the Divine Son of God, appear- 
ing on earth, were not really human but only pre- 
tended to be, there would have been an elaborate 
delusion, impossible to connect with the thought of 
God, in the supposedly unmeaning detail of the life 
of over thirty years in Galilee and Judaea. If it 
were not possible for God really to enter into hu- 
man experience, then the life of the apparition called 
Jesus exhibited not God's nearness and sympathy, 
but his immeasurable and impassable distance. In 
addition to this, there is the consideration empha- 
sized by some of the Fathers that, as God redeemed 
humanity by assuming it, any part not assumed was 
not redeemed. He was either perfectly man, or He 
was a deluding phantom: and if His humanity were 
not real, there has been no redemption. 

But if He were, as the Scriptures teach, the Creeds 
assert, and the Church has believed, both true God 
and true Man, then we can see that He is the true 
connecting-link between heaven and earth, and can 
understand the promise made to Nathanael, true son 
of Israel and typical believer in Christ, '* Verily, verily, 
I say unto you, Hereafter ye — like Israel in his dream 
— shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God 
ascending and descending — not as the first Israel did 



12 



THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 



on a mere ladder stretched between heaven and earth 
but — on the Son of Man." Our Lord HimseK is the 
highest expression of the sacramental principle. 

4. Closely parallel with the history of the Chris- 
tian doctrine of Christ is the history of the Christian 
doctrine of the Eucharist. In every sacrament there 
are the two things, the outward and visible and the 
inward and spiritual. It destroys the nature of a 
sacrament to ignore or deny either the one or the 
other. In teaching and use of the Eucharist both 
errors have been exhibited. There have been those 
who utterly repudiated the idea of anything more 
than the outward sign. The bread and wine in the 
Eucharist merely typify food of the spirit given in 
independence of them. They may be suggestive signs; 
but as realities, they are only what outwardly and 
visibly they appear, bread and wine and nothing else. 
The contrary of this equally denies the nature of a 
sacrament, when, out of regard for the spiritual reality, 
it denies the permanence of what is outward and visible.-' 
It is unsacramental to say "There is no bread and 
wine left in the consecrated elements; the only things 
present are the Body and Blood of Christ." Eucharis- 
tic Nihilianism, or, to use the more usual term, Tran- 
substantiation, born of the same impatient reverence 
as Eutychianism, has been equally disastrous in the 
Church. In both cases there has been failure to 
realize the truth which sacraments are intended to 
teach. 

The formal statements of Eucharistic doctrine which 
correspond to the teaching of Scripture, like the for- 
mal statements of Christological doctrine, show even 



THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 13 

paralleiism of the double truth. Irenseus, for example, 
well represents the mind of the early Church: "As 
bread of earth, when it receives the invocation of 
God is no longer common bread, but Eucharist, con- 
sisting of two things, both an earthly and a heavenly, 
so also our bodies partaking of the Eucharist, are no 
longer corruptible, but have the hope of resurrection 
to eternity." The same teaching is pictorially repre- 
sented in the frescoes of the Roman Catacombs. The 
commonest symbolic representation of the Eucharist 
shows a cross-marked loaf on a tripod, elevated above 
other loaves in baskets round about, but with the 
symbol of our Lord, the Fish. The loaf and Fish to- 
gether quaintly symbolize the truth concerning the 
Holy Sacrament. Thus the art of the early Roman 
Church bears testimony against the one-sided pres- 
entations of later scholastic theologians. Strict Tran- 
substantiation would exhibit the Fish without the 
loaf. This doctrine does, as the Article states, "de- 
stroy the nature of a sacrament," and has in fact been 
associated with disuse of Communion.^ It represents 
an effort to define in terms of mediaeval metaphysics 
the manner of the Presence in the Eucharist, an 
attempt never made by the theologians of the Eastern 
Church, who, using a word sometimes translated 
"Transubstantiation," so define it as to distinguish it 
from the word in its technical Latin sense. This 

^ It is necessary to note, however, that both to defenders and 
deniers Transubstantiation often means not this technical scholastic 
doctrine, but merely affirmation of the Real Presence of our Lord's 
Body and Blood in the Holy Sacrament, and also that well-recognized 
glosses of many Roman Catholic scholars protect the obscured truth. 



14 THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 

the Russian Catechism defines the Communion as "a 
sacrament in which the behever under the forms of 
bread and wine partakes of the very Body and Blood 
of Christ to everlasting life." "In the exposition of 
the faith by the eastern patriarchs, it is said that 
the word fieTova-Lwons is not to be taken to define the 
manner in which the bread and wine are changed into 
the Body and Blood of the Lord; for this none can 
understand but God; but only thus much is signified, 
that the bread truly, really and substantially become 
the very true Body of the Lord, and the wine, the 
very Blood of the Lord." Then St. John Damascene 
is quoted as giving a typical eastern statement. "It 
is truly that Body united with Godhead, which had its 
origin from the holy Virgin; not as though the Body 
which ascended came down from heaven, but because 
the bread and wine themselves are changed into the 
Body and Blood of God. But if thou seekest after 
the manner how this is, let it suffice thee to be told, 
that it is by the Holy Ghost; in like manner as by the 
same Holy Ghost, the Lord formed flesh to Himself, 
and in Himself, and from the Mother of God: nor 
know I aught more than this, that the Word of God is 
true, powerful and almighty, but its manner of opera- 
tion unsearchable." ^ 

In all ancient theologians are to be found similar 
statements of the reality of the spiritual presence with 
recognition of the permanence of the outward sign. 
It is in line with these that the Anglican Catechism 
teaches that there are two parts in every Sacrament, 

^ Russian Catechism. Cf. Headlam: Teaching of the Russian 
Churchy pp. 8 f. note. 



THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 15 

and that in the Eucharist the bread and wine are a 
means of receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. 
Analogous to sacramental presence is sacramental 
action. This is indicated in the Invocation in the 
Consecration Prayer. The Holy Spirit is invoked to 
bless and sanctify the elements that they may become 
the Body and Blood of Christ. The essential action 
is that of God: but there is action of man as well. 
This is emphasized in the words "that we receiving 
them may be partakers of the Body and Blood of 
Christ." As the common things of earth are neces- 
sary for the imparting of spiritual realities; so in the 
use of them it is necessary both that God act and 
that we act too. Both theoretical and practical doc- 
trines of the Eucharist insist on the twofold nature of 
Sacraments and the clear recognition of these. 

Throughout the history of the undivided Church 
the most characteristic Christian rite was the celebra- 
tion of the Holy Eucharist, and the most characteristic 
act of the Christian life the reception of it. Chris- 
tians normally gave the Eucharist a supreme and 
central place, since it represented not only obedience 
to our Lord's injunction on the eve of His Passion, but 
also a practical application of the Incarnation prin- 
ciple, that the earthly, visible, and human may have 
contact wdth the heavenly, eternal and Divine. Em- 
phasis that in the Eucharist there is the coming together 
of two things forces home the truth that the pre- 
dominant thought and paramount duty is Communion. 
The practical consequence of denying either side of 
the sacramental truth has been neglect of this. The 
Zwdnglian, insisting that in the Eucharist there is 



16 THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 

nothing but a material sign of an absent reality, that 
the Sacraments are not really the means of grace but 
bare signs only, laid all stress on the faith in the recip- 
ient and made all virtue attach to the state of mind of 
him who used the symbol. Naturally he came to feel 
that a robust faith could dispense with symbols; and 
although he defended the use of them as harmless, 
or even in a mild way helpful, he came practically to 
feel that, though conventional, they were unneces- 
sary. The result on the whole of Swiss influence has 
been to disparage Sacraments, the Eucharist in par- 
ticular. On the other hand, theologians and ecclesias- 
tics who insisted wholly on the Divine mystery, and to 
defend this taught the annihilation of the outward 
sign, also fostered neglect of Communion and a tend- 
ency to regard the Eucharist as a charm. It was 
left to priests to offer Mass as a vicarious sacrifice; 
and there was a general abstaining from Communion 
except at the comparatively infrequent times at which 
reception was imposed under penalties for neglect. 
Eucharistic Nihilianism has tended to remove the Holy 
Sacrament from actual use precisely as its Christolog- 
ical counterpart removed thought of our Lord from 
human life. The consequence of belief in all heaven 
and no earth has been very similar to insistence on all 
earth and no heaven. The Eucharist is the meeting- 
point of the material and the spiritual; and its true 
function is not realized if emphasis on either side in- 
duces loss of appreciation of the other. From the prac- 
tical standpoint in the Christian life, the Eucharist is 
supreme and central: but it is supreme and central not 
as bare sign nor as remote mystery, but as sacrament. 



THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 17 

3. Reference to the use of Sacraments leads naturally 
' to consideration of the twofold elements and sides in 
the work of redemption. For the salvation of the indi- 
vidual soul God works; and man must work too. Men 
have erred by total reliance on the human effort, and 
by sole insistence on the Divine power. Against both 
the Church has taught that the process of salvation is 
sacramental, a meeting-point for God and man. 

At many times and in many forms has the difficulty 
of correlating the two arisen; and it appears in various 
guises in our own time. But all essential features are 
to be seen in the Pelagian Controversy of the fifth 
century. Pelagius was a typical defender of the 
principles involved on the human side, the freedom 
of man's wdll and the essential goodness of creation. 
Himself a man of singularly pure character, he felt 
bound to protest against the moral slackness and 
flabbiness of many who persisted in sin, throwing all 
blame on the fall of Adam, and trusting to the Church 
to do for them what they would not try to do for 
themselves. He insisted on the possibiHty of hving 
good lives and on the necessity of moral eflFort, rightly 
insisting on the potential goodness of human nature 
created in the image of God. But he ventured to 
affirm, ''A man may by himseK be sinless, if he wishes 
it." He denied that there was in man inherent tend- 
ency to sin, or handicap in heredity, that man needed 
any grace of God other than the powers given him 
in creation, and that there was need of Sacraments 
as means of grace. All, he maintained, that was nec- 
essary for man's salvation was that he should use 
his innate powers. He regarded each man as an 
2 



18 THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 

isolated unit, unrelated to history and independent 
of society. Like many another amiable theorist he 
was led astray by a one-sided ideal for humanity 
which had little to do with men. His good intentions 
were unmistakable: but he ignored facts. His vision 
of what man ought to be, and of what he would like to 
think the world to be, blinded him to facts of what 
man and the world are. He laid necessary stress on 
one side of the problem, but did irreparable harm by 
not seeing that there was another. Actuated by an 
earnestness sincerely Christian, he evacuated the Chris- 
tian system of meaning; and, teaching in the name 
of Christ, sought to separate men from the help 
that Christ gives. 

In the discussions he roused he had two chief oppo- 
nents, St. Jerome, then in the East, and St. Augustine 
in the West. Augustine in particular became the 
champion of God's sovereignty and the Church's great 
Doctor of Grace. The chief theme of much of his 
writing was that in each act and stage of his existence 
man is dependent on the grace of God, that there is 
necessity for Divine action and initiative in the proc- 
ess of human salvation. He could not forget the 
depths of his own sin, and that he had himself been 
snatched as a brand from the burning. In his writ- 
ings as a whole it is possible to discover that he does 
justice to both elements in the process of salvation, 
that he recognized the necessity of the response of 
human faith to the overtures of Divine grace; but in 
some of his treatises he loses sense of proportion, and 
so magnifies the function of the Divine as to eliminate 
the human. The extremes of Augustine were not 



THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 19 

accepted by the Church any more than the extremes 
of Pelagius. The Council of Orange in 529, represent- 
ing the dehberate mind of the Church on these matters, 
avoided both extremes, asserting the complementary 
truths without undertaking fully to explain their 
meaning or their consistency. 

In modern times, discussions concerning God's 
predestination and man's free will have ensued from 
the teachings of the Swiss reformers. Ulrich Zwingli 
and John Calvin made more absolute statements con- 
cerning the Divine sovereignty, and more unflinchingly 
drew the inevitable conclusions of their own logic, than 
ever Augustine did. The foundation of their theol- 
ogy was Divine Omnipotence, their central thought 
always that of the Divine Will. To protect this they 
did not hesitate to deny any real freedom of man's 
will nor to assert that God was the Author of evil. 
The following are characteristic assertions of Zwingli: 
"It is God Who moves the robber to murder one who 
is innocent even though he be unprepared to die." 
"It is He Who made Adam disobedient and the angel 
a transgressor. The treachery of Judas hke the adul- 
tery of David is as much God's work as the call of 
St. Paul." "Judas and Cain were as much rejected to 
eternal misery before the foundation of the world as 
the Blessed Virgin and the crucified thief were chosen 
to blessedness." Zwingli probably shuddered at some 
of his o\\Ti statements; but he would not shrink from 
any conclusion which seemed to follow from the prin- 
ciple which was, in his opinion, the basis of all faith. 
Calvin is equally explicit in his Institutes, though the 
statements seem less harsh from not being applied 



20 THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 

to concrete cases. "We assert that those whom He 
gives over to damnation are by a just and irrepre- 
hensible, though incomprehensible, judgment excluded 
from all access to eternal life." ^ "Therefore if we 
cannot give a reason why God has mercy on the 
elect except that it so pleases Him, so in the reproba- 
tion of .others we have no cause but God's will." ^ 
"All the sons of Adam fall by the will of God into their 
present state of misery, and, as for the reason of it, 
we must always fall back on the mere choice of the 
Divine will, the reason of which is hidden from us." ^ 
"I grant that it is a horrible decree, yet no one can 
deny that God foreknew the end of man before He 
formed him, and foreknew it because by His own 
decree He ordained it." ^ Calvin did not hesitate to 
admit that, according to his teaching, God chooses 
"capriciously, arbitrarily, and irrationally." As has 
been well said, "Calvinism sacrifices everything to 
the conception of omnipotence, and in so doing makes 
God immoral and man non-moral." ^ This theology 
has provoked violent reaction and protest. If God 
were as Calvin represented Him, many men have 
refused to believe in God. The declaration of John 
Stuart Mill is classic, "I will call no being good who 
is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my 
fellow-creatures: and if such a being can sentence 
me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go." 

One of the chief consequences of this distortion of the 
truth of God's sovereignty by the inflexibility of a fero- 

^ Inst. Ill: cxxvi: 7. ^ Inst. Ill: cxxxii: 11. 

3 Inst. Ill: cxxxiii: 4. * Inst. Ill: cxxiii: 7. 

^ Moore: History of the Reformation, 501-518. 



THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 21 

cious logic, this flagrant denial of patent facts in human 
life, has been violent reaction in favor of what, accord- 
ing to Calvin, was a damnable and damned humanity. 
For the past two centuries there has been much insist- 
ence on the essential goodness of human nature, the 
actual goodness, disguised it may be but unmistak- 
able, in the majority of men, a passionate defense of 
the goodness of God the Creator, and many efforts to 
bring into prominence the obscured truth of God's 
Fatherhood. Much of the influence of Unitarianism 
has been due to its sympathetic humanism, as con- 
trasted with Calvinistic denunciations. Men have 
turned with relief from such statements as Calvin's 
that "God's image in man is wholly defaced" and 
"man is wholly given to evil" to optimism like 
Channing's, "I love mankind because they are chil- 
dren of God." Channing gained a hearing by preach- 
ing a gospel of health and hope. He insisted on the 
dignity of human nature, on the germ of progress 
in every human being, and on the unspeakable value 
of each human soul. He felt that vilification of 
human nature was "like a wrong done to an angel." 
Through his influence and that of men like him, there 
has developed a strong humanitarianism, which in 
many forms has tended to concentrate attention too 
exclusively on the human side of things. Positivism, 
for example, knows no higher object of worship than 
collective humanity. "Man must be his own Gospel," 
says Frederic Harrison, "He must reveal truth to him- 
self — by himself. He must found or frame his own 
religion — or must have none." The Positivist holds 
that man's supreme function is self-contemplation, so 



22 THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 

that what is called prayer, Kke the Pharisee's in the 
parable, takes the form of complacency at one's own 
superiority to the rest of mankind. As Emerson once 
said to Whittier, "There lives an old Calvinist in that 
house who says that she prays for me every day. I 
am glad she does. I pray for myself." "Does thee?" 
said Whittier. "What dost thee pray for, friend 
Emerson.^" "Well," replied Emerson, "when I first 
open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look 
out upon the beautiful world, I thank God that I 
am alive, and that I live so near Boston." There 
is something at first sight attractive, but on second 
thought singularly unsatisfactory, about such self- 
satisfied, seK-poised lives. 

It is doubtful whether a tendency to identify the 
ideal with the actual ought to be called optimism. 
It is, at any rate, an optimism which is impatient 
and shallow in that it refuses to take account of all 
the facts. The truest criticism of enthusiasts for 
humanity as it is, is that they lower its proper stand- 
ard. Such enthusiasm for humanity is in reality 
despair for humanity. "The saddest view of human 
nature is that it has not fallen." Enthusiasm for 
what humanity is not, but what man knows it ought 
to be, is truer and more inspiring than blind devotion 
to things as they are. There can be no satisfactory 
religion which does not recognize the essential and 
potential goodness of humanity: but neither can any 
religion be satisfactory which does not recognize its 
actual degradation. Sin is a fact. "I see things that 
are better and approve of them; yet I turn from them 
for the worse," may be said at times by every man. 



THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 23 

Religion must never ignore either the ideal or the 
actual. It must combine the hope of the optimist 
with the clear vision of the pessimist. As Pascal 
observed, "It is dangerous to make man consider over- 
much that he is on equality Vv^ith beasts without point- 
ing out also his greatness. It is also dangerous to 
make him consider overmuch his greatness without 
noting his degradation. It is still more dangerous to 
let him ignore either the one or the other. It is most 
to his advantage to call attention to both." 

There have been curious illustrations of combina- 
tion of devotion to the Divine in theory with exclusive 
care for the human in practice, of soaring theology 
with grovelling selfishness. Some of the most rigorous 
predestinarians among Calvinists have been Epicureans 
in practice. They have exalted the Divine Will in 
theology; but they have followed their own wills in 
every-day life. They have assumed the identity of 
God's Will with their own wilfulness; and, as in the 
parallel case of the Mohammedans, belief in predes- 
tination, which left a man hopeless and helpless in 
abstract statement, made him irresistibly effective on 
the battle-field and in the scramble for this world's 
goods. It has been not uncommon for thoroughgoing 
predestinarians to assume as the ruling principle of 
life, ''God from all eternity by His irresistible Will 
has decreed that I do exactly as I please," a con- 
viction which has given both force and ferocity of 
character. When analyzed it may sometimes be seen 
that theoretical fear of God has not meant real appre- 
hension of man's dependence on His Maker and 
Saviour. 



24 THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 

4. Similar to the principles of the doctrine of Grace 
is the Church's teaching concerning Inspiration. 
Inspiration means that God uses man and gives him 
power to carry out His purposes. The process involves 
neither supersession of the human by the Divine nor 
elimination of the Divine in the human. The name 
inspiration stands for every aspect and consequence 
of the fact that a man may be endued with power 
from on high; but it is usually identified with the 
Spirit's use of the Evangelists for the perpetuation of 
Divine truth. The books of Scripture show how 
entirely everything that is himaan may be taken and 
utilized for Divine purposes, and that in the results of 
human activities may be discovered something more 
than human which, when analyzed, must be ascribed 
to God. The books of the Bible were written by men, 
and yet are not as other books. There is something 
mingled with the human element in them which 
differentiates them from other literature, even the 
noblest. The only satisfactory explanation of them is 
that "prophecy came not in old time by the will of 
man; but holy men of God spake as they were moved 
by the Holy Ghost." 

Two sorts of theories of inspiration do violence to 
the facts: first, those which taking the Scriptures as 
human productions refuse to see in them anything 
more than ordinary compositions of man, and in dealr 
ing with them drag them to a level which eliminates 
all that is most distinctive; and second, those which 
assume that the Divine action involves use of men as 
impersonal machines, and in consequence assert that 
every word, syllable, Hebrew point of the Massoretic 



THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 25 

text, and variant reading of authorized translations, 
must be taken as infallible and indelible handwriting 
of God. Inspiration is a sacramental process, in which 
traces of both Divine and human action may be seen. 
It is an inspiration of men, not of things. In thinking 
of Scripture the inspired book is only understood as 
we think of the inspired man behind the inspired book, 
and of the inspiring Holy Spirit behind the man. 
The Church's statements concerning inspiration of 
Scripture do not imply either that it is a case of all 
man and no God, or of all God and no man. They 
teach that the Spirit of God uses the powers of obedient 
man, and that in the process of evangelistic work God 
and man work together. 

It may seem that the matters we have been con- 
sidering have only an antiquarian or academic interest. 
On the contrary they have present and permanent 
importance as illustrations of the law which relates 
the life of man to the life of God. As these two 
things have been considered, there have often been 
oscillations from exclusive consideration of the one 
to exclusive consideration of the other: and the Chris- 
tian Church has always striven to preserve a stable 
equilibrium which gives due regard to both. The 
experience of the past has present value in its exhibi- 
tions of the laws of truth which must ever condition 
our own tasks. 

Infinite hope, infinite humility — these are the 
proper ingredients of man's normal consciousness. 
Spiritual life, like physical, depends upon the coalition 
of two elements, a masculine and a feminine, generative 



26 THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 

grace acting upon receptive faith. For growth there 
must be coordination of wills, man's with God's. Indi- 
vidual salvation depends upon individual appropria- 
tion of the effects of the Atonement, which must be 
conceived not only as an act of God for man which 
he could not perform for himself, but also an exhibition 
on the part of pattern man of obedience unto death, 
a symbolical representation of the work of redemption 
in which man himself plays a part. Personal relation 
always involves interaction of personal force; and in 
the relation between the Divine and human persons 
there is a reciprocal action which alone gives reality 
to spiritual experience. The doctrine of the Holy 
Spirit, God working directly upon man and in man by 
rousing man's own spirit into cooperation, correlates 
the functions of man and God in the redemptive 
process. 

Humanity and the world are sacramental. Each 
represents electric forces playing between two poles. 
There is no clue to the meaning of either except through 
recognition that that which comes from God, though 
distinct from God, must always be related to Him; 
and moreover, that that nature which has been created 
in God's image with freedom of will and capacity for 
personal life, must always be taken into account in 
dealing with practical affairs. The tragedies of his- 
tory and the annoyances of every-day life alike come 
from failure to apprehend the principle of the Word 
made flesh. It is by standing squarely on the basis 
of the truth revealed in Him, that we are in the best 
way of solving the puzzles and problems which perplex 
our daily paths. 



THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 27 

It is unsatisfactory merely to place side by side 
differing, contrasting, and sometimes seemingly con- 
tradictory, truths without effort to relate or to har- 
monize them. We believe in the unity of truth; and 
we wish to see it. The sacramental principle is essen- 
tially antithetic; yet the Sacrament itself is a synthesis. 
The clue to the meaning of all sacramental truth is to 
be found in our Lord Himself. If He, subsisting in 
two natures, is the great Sacrament, the union of these 
two in His one Person is the type of unity. If in 
Him we find the principle of life which impels us to 
make distinctions between the Creator and the crea- 
ture, and to think along two lines, in Him also we 
find the fact of coinherence which gives the law and 
principle of unity in truth and in life. The Sacrament 
which distinguishes also combines; and in Him Who 
would seem to be the most striking example of distinc- 
tion and division, there is on the contrary the most 
perfect harmony and unity. It is the Gospel which 
gives the clue to the meaning of God's life and of our 
own. 

"Therefore men that read the story 

Of the Manger and the Rood, 
Well may greet the only Gospel 

Straight from Him the only Good: 
Heart and mind go forth to meet it; 

This is light, or light is none, — 
To believe in God the Father 

And in Jesus Christ His Son. 

"This is light; — where dimness lingers. 
Faith can wait till shadows flee; 
And Life's riddles less perplex us. 
When the truth has made us free. 



28 THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 

Yea, the Truth and Light Incarnate — 

For if Christ we truly scan, 
Him we trust in, we must worship. 

Word made Flesh, and God made Man " ^ 

^ Bright: Hymns and Other Verses, Credo in Deum. 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

The sacramental principle underlies the history 
of the Christian Church; and many controversies in 
the Christian past are best understood as representing 
efforts on the part of the Church to be loyal to both 
sides of this. The conflict in modern times between 
the types of thought commonly known as Catholic 
and Protestant may be viewed in the same way. It 
is the purpose of this paper to consider the significance 
of these in the history of the Church.^ 



The name Catholic — Universal — has been applied 
to the Christian Church from earliest times. It was 
apparently in common use in the early part of the 
second century, a fact which implies its probable adop- 
tion during the Apostolic Age. Ignatius of Antioch, 

1 The reading of the paper at the Cathedral Conference was 
prefaced as follows: "The announcement of the title Catholic and 
Protestant will suggest to some of you that I intend to speak of the 
proposed 'change of name' for the Protestant Episcopal Church. 
Such an intention I disclaim. It is true that this choice of subject 
has been suggested by the discussion at this time, and that all the 
facts rehearsed have direct bearing upon it: but these facts have 
deeper significance than what concerns the common title of a reli- 
gious body in the United States. I have taken no part in this dis- 
cussion and have not become excited about it. I know little of its 



30 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

writing to the Church in Smyrna about the year 110, 
says, '* Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let 

details. I have received dozens of pamphlets on the subject; but 
I have read none of them, nor have I followed the matter in Church 
papers. My work confines me to a country diocese where I live 
outside the discussions of newspapers and Church Clubs. Never- 
theless I have opinions on the subject of * change of name,' formed 
from what general knowledge I have of the state of the Christian 
world and of the need for an effective presentation of Christianity 
in my own diocese, and these opinions I am perfectly willing to ex- 
press. Lest my disclaimer of intention not to enter this controversy 
may seem to indicate desire to dodge a burning question by taking 
refuge in the coolness of generalities, I will state briefly what my 
opinions are merely because I wish to dismiss them. 

"1. I believe that a change in the legal title of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church would be a good thing. I was in hearty sympathy 
with the proposal made at the last General Convention to relate 
the common title to the name of the whole Church enshrined in 
the Creeds. The unchangeable name of the Church of Christ, the 
One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, stands for the positive 
ideals of the Divine Society which it is the duty of all Christians to 
realize more fully in themselves. It is unfortunate — in a sense, 
wrong — that separate groups of Christians need any other name 
than this. It is mere advertisement of a divided Christendom that 
separated bodies have to choose their respective labels, the badges 
of schism. Yet under present conditions the distinguishing names 
are necessary; and they should express as Christian ideals as possible. 
There are names of two sorts, those which express some aspect of 
Christian truth, and those which perpetuate some historic quarrel. 
The name * Protestant Episcopal* is one of the latter sort. It com- 
memorates, first, a quarrel between the Church of England and the 
Church of Rome in the sixteenth century, and, second, a quarrel 
between the Church of England and Puritans in the seventeenth. 
* Protestant Episcopalians' are nominally those whose characteristic 
quality is that they continue to quarrel with Romanists and Cal- 
vinists. I believe that the Church of England had ground for its 
quarrels; otherwise I should not belong to the Anglican Communion; 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 31 

the people be: even as where Jesus is, there is the 
Cathohe Church." This is the first occurrence of the 

but it would be more helpful to have a name for the Church which 
emphasized points of agreement with Roman Catholics and Presby- 
terians than one which merely called attention to points of difiPerence. 
Christianity consists of faith in the Living Christ, not in perpetuation 
of quarrels of dead men. The name borne by any religious body had 
better express an ideal than chronicle a calamity. Alexander Camp- 
bell was quite right in not wishing his followers to be called 
' Campbellites,' a name recalling his own personal controversies 
with Presbyterians and Baptists, but rather * Disciples of Christ,' 
a name expressing of the imiversal Christian ideal, which has doubt- 
less had an excellent efiPect in uplifting the standards of those who 
specially wish to bear it. The men of the eighteenth century who 
adopted the name * Protestant Episcopal* did the best they knew 
how to select a title which seemed appropriately to place them in 
the context of religious life in America: but the name is not one 
calculated to win men to devotion to the highest Christian principles 
for America. I believe that a change of this name is desirable and 
inevitable, and that when it is made, we shall be better equipped for 
our work. 

"2. However, any change of this kind must come in response to 
a very general and spontaneous wish in the Church as a whole, not 
by the forced action of a narrow majority in a controversy. More- 
over, there should be general acquiescence in the common title 
chosen as substitute. At this time conditions in the Church do not 
seem ripe for the change. I dislike the expression * inexpedient at 
the present time,* which usually means, *We know perfectly well 
that we ought to do a particular thing, but have not the moral 
courage to do it.' Yet it might describe the present situation to 
say that, though change of this name is desirable, it is not desirable 
that it be made now, because at some future time it can be made 
better. 

"3. The discussion of the matter is a good thing. It has an 
educative value. But as some one said to me, *What we need is 
not so much change of name as change of heart,' or as it might be 
put, * not so much change of names as realization of things,* We can- 



32 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

term in any document which has happened to survive: 
but Ignatius refers to the followers of our Lord, the 
universal society, by a title which he evidently expected 
those whom he addressed to recognize. Over forty 
years later, the Church in Smyrna which had been 
greeted by Ignatius on his way to martyrdom at Rome, 
issued an account of the martyrdom of its own Bishop, 
Polycarp, in the form of a letter to the church in 
Philomelium. This letter commenced: "The Church 
of God which sojourneth in Smyrna to the Church of 
God which sojourneth in Philomelium and to all the 
brotherhoods of the Holy Catholic Church sojourning 
in every place; mercy and peace and love from God 
the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ be multiplied." 
Thus in the middle of the second century was the 
Church throughout the world distinguished from the 
local congregations which composed it. In the litera- 
ture of the late second century the title frequently 
occurs, and no other is used in the same way. It was, 
as matter of course, taken as the Church's characteris- 
tic title in formal professions of belief, the Creeds. 
Its first use was probably intended not only to dis- 

not change the Church of God, though we may ourselves gradually 
grow into greater appreciation of what it means. Discussion of 
names is mere scratching on the surface. What we need is to lay 
hold of the principles of eternal life which lie behind some of the 
names which we habitually and unthinkingly use. 

"Although I have deliberately chosen to speak of the historic 
significance of the names Catholic and ProtestanU because I believe 
the thought of them to be much in our minds at this time, I shall 
miss my aim altogether, if what I say seems merely to relate to a 
matter of local appellation, rather than to principles of spiritual 
life which pertain to eternity and all mankind." 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 33 

tinguish the whole Church from local bodies, but also 
to mark a difference between the Christian Church 
and the Jewish, the former being universal while the 
latter was only racial. This characteristic of Chris- 
tianity disappointed the expectation of the Jews 
who believed that their race had a monopoly of God's 
favour; and it contradicts all theories of God's work- 
ings which would restrict His grace to narrow channels, 
or deny possibility of salvation to any race or class of 
men. The possible scope of the Church's influence 
is as wide as humanity.^ It was St. Paul who first 
learned and then taught the truth that the Church 
is an Universal Church in which Gentiles are fellow- 
heirs of God's promises side by side with Jews. The 
term has a twofold suggestion. It has reference to 
the whole human race as the sphere of the Church's 
potential influence, and to God as Creator of the 
race. It connects the thought of the Church with 
that of the creation of man, rather than, as was done 
by the Jewish Church, with the call of Abraham and 
the deliverance from Egypt. 

A side-light on its significance may be thrown by 
the fact that at the time of its general adoption the 
Church was engaged in controversies with Gnostics. 
Against Gnostic dualism with its teaching of the evil 
of the material world, produced by a being inferior 
or hostile to God, with its insistence on the evil of the 
body, and its restriction of redemption to a limited 
number of enlightened elect, the Church proclaimed 
in the forefront of the Creed its belief in God the 

^ This is expanded in a paper on The Catholic Church given in 
the Appendix, pp. 111-114. 
3 



34 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

Father Almighty, not sharing sway with a hostile 
deity, in God as Maker not only of spiritual heaven 
but also of material earth, of things visible as well 
as things invisible, of man's body as well as of his 
spirit. And this God Who had created all things and 
had seen that they were good, was the Saviour and 
Redeemer, not of an esoteric band merely as Gnostics 
taught, nor of the seed of Abraham only as Jews 
believed, but of all men. "God willeth all men to be 
saved;" and His Church, organ and medium of salva- 
tion, is intended for all mankind. "Whosoever will, 
let him come." This thought of the whole human race 
as object of the Church's effort was connected with 
thought of God as universal Creator, and also with 
thought of our Lord as not merely Second Abraham, 
father of the faithful in one nation, Jewish Messiah, 
but as Second Adam, progenitor of the whole race, 
the Catholic Man. This sequence of thought has its 
origin in St. Paul. It was he who first elaborated the 
idea of our Lord's cosmic relations, presenting Him 
as "first-born of all creation." "All things were 
created by Him and for Him, and He is before all 
things, and by Him all things consist. And He is 
the head of the body, the Church. . . . For it pleased 
the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell; and 
having made peace through the blood of His cross, by 
Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I 
say, whether they be things in earth or things in 
heaven." ^ He also presented the Church as the 
Catholic Organism. "Now in Christ Jesus ye who 
were sometimes far oflf are made nigh by the blood of 
1 Col. i: 15-20. 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 35 

Christ. For He is our peace, Who hath made both 
one, and hath broken down midwalls of partition." ^ 
The scope of redemption is as wide as the scope of 
creation; and the Church's limits are therefore merely 
those of the human race. Abstractly considered, the 
term Catholic applied to the Church elevates the 
thought to God the universal Father and expands it 
to all humanity as an universal brotherhood. *'To as 
many as received Him, to them gave He power to 
become sons of God." 

Concretely considered, the term Catholic has in 
the history of the Church been used to emphasize a 
number of principles less fundamental.^ Used at first 
of the Church as being world-wide in extent,^ it came 
to be the special name for the Church, so that a martyr 
on his trial when asked of what Church he was, replied 
"Of the Catholic, for Christ has no other." During 
the late second century it became a term to distinguish 
the Church as a whole from sects and groups of Chris- 
tians who adopted names taken from places and party 
leaders. A Catholic Christian was one who repudiated 
all merely local bodies and select parties; and the 
Catholic Church was distinguished from heretical and 
schismatical sects. Thus Pacian, Bishop of Barcelona 
during the latter part of the fourth century, writing 

1 Eph. ii: 11-22. 

2 Such comments as are here made are by no means exhaustive. 
They are true as far as they go; but they do not, and do not pre- 
tend to, cover the whole ground. They are to be taken as fragmen- 
tary contribution toward, not as complete outline of, the discussion 
of a great subject. 

^ Cf . Optatus II : 46. Cum inde dicta sit Catkolica, quod sit rationalis 
et ubique diffusa. 



36 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

to a Novatian friend, Sempronian, follows this line 
in a letter on "The Catholic Name." ^ "There ought," 
he says, "to be no contest about the name Catholic. 
For if it is through God that our people obtain this 
name, no question is to be raised, when Divine au- 
thority is followed. If through man, we must dis- 
cover when it was first taken. Then if the name is 
good, no odium rests with it: if ill, it need not be 
envied. The Novatians, I hear, are called after 
Novatus or Novatian; yet it is the sect which I accuse 
in them, not the name: nor has any one objected their 
name to Montanus or the Phrygians. But under the 
Apostles, you will say, no one was called Catholic. 
Be it so. Thus it shall have been. Allow even that. 
But when after the Apostles heresies burst forth, and 
were striving under various names to tear piecemeal 
and divide the Dove and Queen of God, did not the 
Apostolic people require a name of their own, whereby 
to mark the unity of the people that were uncorrupted, 
lest the error of some rend limb by Kmb the undefiled 
virgin of God.^ Was it not seemly that the chief head 
should be distinguished by its own peculiar appella- 
tion .f^ Suppose this very day I entered a populous city. 
When I found Marcionites, ApoUinarians, Cataphry- 
gians, Novatians, and others of the kinds who call 
themselves Christians, by what name should I recog- 
nize the congregation of my own people, unless it were 
named Catholic.^ Certainly that which has stood for 
so many ages was not borrowed from men. This 
name Catholic sounds not of Marcion, of Apelles, or 
of Montanus, nor does it take heretics as its authors. 
1 Pacian: Epistle I: 5-8, esp. 8. 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 37 

... Is the authority of Apostolic men, of primitive 
priests, of sHght weight with us? . . . Shall the fathers 
follow our authority and the antiquity of saints give 
way to be amended by us, and times now putrefying 
through their sins pluck out the grey hairs of Apostolic 
age? And yet, my brother, be not troubled: Chris- 
tian is my name, but Catholic is my surname. The 
former gives me a name, the latter distinguishes me. 
By the one I am approved; by the other I am but 
marked. And if at last we must give an account of 
the word CathoUc, and draw it out from the Greek 
by a Latin interpretation, 'Catholic' is 'everywhere 
one ' — uhique unum — or, as learned men think, 
'obedience in all,' i,e.^ all the commands of God. . . . 
Therefore he who is a Catholic, the same man is obe- 
dient. He who is obedient, the same is a Christian: and 
thus the Catholic is a Christian. Wherefore our people 
when named Catholic are separated by this appellation 
from the heretical name. But if also the word Catho- 
lic means 'everywhere one,' as those first think, . . . 
amidst all she is one, and one over all. If thou askest 
the reason of the name, enough has been said." 

This explanation of Pacian, a western Bishop 
trained in the school of Cyprian, indicates very well 
the part played by the name Catholic Church during 
the conciliar period. The Universal Church was dis- 
tinguished from small bodies of Christians, who, at 
different times and places, adopted some specialty 
proclaimed as the chief thing in Christianity and 
endeavored to perpetuate their peculiarity by cor- 
porate organization. The World Church was set 
over against the petty societies of particular places 



38 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

and persons. The distinction could be easily made 
in the days of undivided Christendom, the day, that 
is, not when all Christians were completely of one 
mind, but when the intercommunion of Bishops 
throughout the world, acting under the leadership of 
the great historic sees, preserved a general union of 
Christians and held the Church together as one organi- 
zation, the unity of which the world could see. Dif- 
ferences and divergencies there might be; but there 
was as yet no division except the self-isolation of 
inconsiderable fractions here and there. The term 
"Catholic Church" stood out in the fulness of its 
obvious outward meaning until the separation of East 
and West. Even after this, it still kept much of its 
significance, since appeal could be made to the teaching 
of the undivided Church, and for long the feeling was 
maintained that the two parts of the Church, though 
for a time out of communion, were still one. But 
after a time, each of the two great divisions of Chris- 
tendom claimed by itself to be the only true Church. 
The East claimed, and still claims, that it alone can 
be recognized as the Catholic Church. It has never 
changed; but the West, it argues, cut itself off, thereby 
going into schism, and can only be restored to the 
Church by submission to the terms imposed by the 
eastern patriarchates which have never swerved from 
the ancient faith. It is not always suflSciently recog- 
nized that the Greek Church makes as exclusive claims 
to be the one true Church as does the Latin. Rome, 
it considers, was the primitive Protestant, which 
defied Church-authority and cut itself off, thereby 
establishing a bad precedent which has been farther 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 39 

followed in the fickle West. The following is a typical 
statement of the attitude of the Eastern Church to 
the Christian world. 

"By the will of God the Holy Church, after the fall- 
ing away of many schisms and of the Roman Patriar- 
chate, was preserved by the Greek Eparchies and 
Patriarchates, and only those communities can acknowl- 
edge one another as fully Christian, which preserve 
their unity with the Eastern Patriarchates, or enter 
into this unity. For there is one God and one Church, 
and within her there is neither dissension or disagree- 
ment. And, therefore, the Church is called Orthodox, 
or Eastern, or Greco-Russian; but all these are only 
temporary designations. The Church ought not to 
be accused of pride for calling herself Orthodox, inas- 
much as she also calls herseK Holy. When false doc- 
trines shall have disappeared, there will be no further 
need of the name Orthodox: for then there will be no 
erroneous Christianity. When the Church shall have 
extended herself, or the fulness of the nations shall 
have entered into her, then all local appellations will 
cease; for the Church is not bound up with any local- 
ity, and neither boasts herself of any particular see 
or territory, nor preserves the inheritance of Pagan 
pride: but she calls herself One Holy Catholic and 
Apostolic: knowing that the whole world belongs to 
her, and that no locality therein possesses any special 
significance, but only temporarily can and does serve 
for the glorification of the name of God, according to 
His unsearchable will." ^ 

^ Khomiakoff quoted in Birkbeck: Russia and the English Church, 
p. 222. 



40 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

The attitude of the Church of Rome scarcely calls 
for comment. The great patriarchal See of the West, 
forced into a position of ecclesiastical leadership by a 
combination of circumstances, inheriting not only 
Apostolic traditions from its Christian beginnings, but 
also the imperial traditions of the Eternal City, passed 
from a position of patriarchal primacy to one of suprem- 
acy over the churches of western Europe, and gradu- 
ally evolved a theory of the Church and of unity which 
it has sought to impose on the Christian World. Since 
the beginning of the Middle Ages the Roman Bishop 
has claimed to be ruler of the Church and World by 
Divine right, by inheritance of the position of Vicar 
of Christ from St. Peter. The See of Peter is head 
and centre of the Church; and to be Catholic Chris- 
tian is to be in communion with the Pope. 

The upheaval of western Christendom during the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries further com- 
plicated matters. The claims of many to have dis- 
covered the only true Biblical Christianity has set 
up many new standards; and many bodies have claimed 
to represent the true spirit of the Catholic Church, 
using the term in such a way as virtually to empty it 
of concrete significance. Yet there has been persist- 
ent hold of the name and yearning for the thing it 
represents among the manifold divisions of the Protes- 
tant world. As Dr. Newman Smyth writes in a recent 
article:^ ''One primary idea appears in all these 
Confessional definitions of the Church; their common 
heritage and hope, which none of them would lose, is 
denoted by the ever-recurring word Catholic. The 
^ Constructive Quarterly, No. 2, p. 231. 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 41 

catholicity which is ascribed primarily in these declara- 
tions to the invisible Church, is recognized also ex- 
plicitly by some, and implicitly in others, as a true 
note likewise also of the visible Church. It is generally 
held and declared that particular churches should 
retain their fellowship in, and realize their obligations 
to, the one Catholic Church. The reformers of the 
sixteenth century, it should be remembered, did not 
set the Words, Protestant and Catholic, in hostile 
antithesis. . . . The word Catholic remains among 
Protestants to this day, hallowed and lifted up above 
our 'unhappy divisions' as the ideal oneness of all 
communions." Dr. Smyth's definition of Catholic 
is worth remembering, "the ideal oneness of all 
communions." 

There was once an actual unity of the majority of 
those bearing the Christian name, which made it 
natural to speak of the Catholic Church. Although 
this has long ceased to be, the ideal of Catholic Unity 
is still maintained even among many who have drifted 
far from the corporate sense to which the ideal owes 
any actual embodiment. It counts for much that 
among the great majority of Christians at the present 
day there is growing conviction that there ought to 
be unity of faith among all who profess themselves 
servants of Christ, and that this unity of faith ought 
to exhibit itself in the unity of One Church for the 
world. The Catholic aspiration is a common posses- 
sion; and more and more is there conviction that by 
humility and patience effort must be made to realize 
the Catholic Church in fact. It is almost inevitable 
for men to hold to the Catholic ideal, if they have 



42 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

anything of the historic sense. The CathoUc Church 
is the Church of the Fathers, different in ways from 
all existing presentations of Christianity, yet with 
clearly defined principles and aspects which have 
never been wholly lost in the shattering of divisions. 
It still exists underneath as well as behind the frac- 
tions of the Christian world; and its principles are 
revealed by fragmentary expression. The conception 
of the Universal Church can never be ignored by those 
who can look behind and beyond things of the moment 
to the things which belong to all time. 

The history of the name Catholic is practically 
coeval with that of the Church. During nineteen cen- 
turies it has been used in different senses of which six 
may be distinguished. (1) The Universal Church as 
distinct from the Jewish Church. If, as is probable, 
this formed part of its primary meaning, it expresses 
the favorite thesis of St. Paul. (2) The World Church 
as distinct from local churches or congregations. In 
this sense it is used by Ignatius and in the account of 
the martyrdom of Polycarp. (3) The World Church 
as distinct from heretical and schismatical sects. This 
is the special meaning attached to it in the treatise of 
Pacian on The Catholic Name. All these meanings 
entered into the connotation in the days of the undi- 
vided Church. (4) The Greek Church, representing 
the four eastern patriarchates, which believes itself 
alone to be the primitive Catholic Church since the 
defection of the West. (5) The Roman Communion, 
maintaining that it alone is the Church on the theory 
that prerogatives of St. Peter as Vicar of Christ have 
descended to the Roman Papacy, which is thus Divinely 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 43 

established as visible head of the Church and centre 
and bond of visible unity. (6) ''The ideal oneness of 
all Christians," associated by some with recognition 
of that background of historic principle which links 
the Church of the early centuries with Churches of 
today. As used by many of ourselves, the name 
Catholic Church represents a theory and a fact, the 
theory of the unity of all sharers in the One Baptism 
of the One Lord and the fact of the continuity in 
Christian history of certain structural principles of 
faith and life which make it possible to recognize the 
survival of the One Church in the fragmentary pres- 
entation of a divided Christendom. 

These diflFerent uses of the name Catholic have 
expressed with varying degrees of clearness certain 
main ideas, of which four may be specified as most 
important: (1) The Divine element in the Church, (2) 
the corporate aspect of religious life, (3) the authority 
of the Church, and (4) the mystical character of the 
Church's life. These all hang together. The first 
is the distinctive principle, the others corollaries. The 
Church comes from God, and is the sphere of His 
special activity. It follows as necessary consequence 
that it conforms to the social law of creation, that 
it represents His authority, and that its life consists 
of contact with Him. 

(1) The fundamental idea of the Catholic concep- 
tion of the Church is that it is a Divine organism, a 
society in which there is special and supernatural 
activity of Almighty God, ''a Divine society with a 
human mission." The Cathohc idea starts with God, 
proceeds from thought of Him to that of all creation. 



44 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

and thence to the universal scope of salvation of which 
the Church is appointed instrument. It is concerned 
with the only theory which gives the life and worship 
of the Church intelligible meaning. Following a 
necessary order of thought, it traces everything from 
its origin in God. 

(2) The mission of the Church to all men necessarily 
lays stress on its corporate aspect, on the fact that it 
is a family not a mere aggregation of units, a body not 
a dust-heap.^ The Church is a "new creation"; and 
the method of salvation or recreation is analogous to 
that of the original creation. God created man and 
woman with powers of begetting a race: His creative 
function was put into commission. He placed man 
on the earth with the command, "Be fruitful and 
multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it." In 
the era of the new creation. He again sent men with 
powers of begetting a new race by a new birth with 
the command, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations 
baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the 
Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe 
all things whatsoever I have commanded you." The 
principle of salvation is that of creation, that man 
gains all his powers and possibilities of self-realization 
as member of a family, that God's gifts are given to 
the race, that the individual only can share them by 
inheritance and association. Normal human life 
abhors isolation as Nature abhors a vacuum. 

(3) Both these principles, the Divine origin of the 

^ As Burke speaks of " the dust and powder of individualism," 
or another, Hibemior Hibernis, of "the uselessness of un-unified 
units"! 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 45 

Church and the social method of salvation, lead to 
thought of the Church's authority. The Church repre- 
sents God; or more exactly, it is the Body of Christ, 
Christ's Vicar on earth. In so far as it truly represents 
His teaching and activity, it is invested with Divine 
authority. "He that receiveth you receiveth Me." 
It is an Apostolic Church, a Church having mission 
from Christ; and the idea of authority is inherent in 
that of Apostolicity. Furthermore, as a society it 
represents something paramount to the claims of 
individuals. The many members of the body must 
discharge their respective functions with the harmony 
of the subordination. The body must be considered 
as a whole; no member has use or life except as one 
of many coordinate parts. There is, therefore, in 
any body an authority to which all component parts 
must submit. So in the Church. From the thought 
of the Body as body comes the idea of authority as 
well as from thought of that Body's Head. The 
practical consequence of adherence to the Catholic 
conception of the Church is the spirit of obedience. 
Pacian, after making his much-quoted utterance, 
"Christian is my name, Catholic my surname," almost 
immediately adds, "Therefore he who is a Catholic, 
the same man is obedient." Catholicity in principle 
involves reverent submission to authority in practice. 
Nothing more sincerely expresses belief in the Divine 
character of the Church than recognition of the para- 
mount claims of the whole Church over those of special 
interests and recognition of leadership in its constituted 
officers. Yet there are many examples of discrepancy 
between the theory and practice of professed Catholics. 



46 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

As in the case of extreme predestinarians the theory 
of Divine absolutism has been made a cloak for wilful- 
ness and eccentricity in conduct, so the Catholic theory 
of the Church has sometimes been made a stalking- 
horse for mundane politics and for ultra-assertions of 
private judgment. The great example of the former 
is the identification of the interests of the Catholic 
Church with the ecclesiastical transformation of the 
Roman Empire, sometimes appearing as Papal autoc- 
racy, sometimes as Curial oligarchy. There are 
examples of the latter in those who, claiming almost 
a monopoly of the Catholic name, are conspicuous 
examples of Protestant individualism in their wilful 
following of their own theories in defiance of authority. 
But caricatures must not be allowed to obscure truth. 
The Catholic theory always expresses the principle of 
authority; but this authority is that of the Church's 
Divine Head, which has to be protected from disguis- 
ing nullifications in the traditions of men. The Church 
has to speak and act in our Lord's Name for the sake 
of doing His work. When she does this, she has His 
authority: but no appropriation of sacred names can 
give authority to teaching and action alien from His 
spirit. There have been times when the Church has 
striven to exercise authority for authority's own sake 
and for the apparent enhancing of her own reputation. ^ 
Authority cannot be dispensed with: but its poles 

^ In the School which I attended as a boy, there was a master 
of the lower forms of whom this story was told. One day he an- 
nounced, "The Amazon River is three hundred thousand miles long." 
Up went the hands of sundry small boys. "Please, sir, the book 
says three thousand." "Silence," roared the pedagogue, "7 say the 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 47 

are those of truth and right. Only as it preserves 
these two can it be justified; but it is justified in those 
who are genuinely loyal to our Lord. *'Only they 
who obey know how to command." Capacity for 
rule inheres in the spirit of submission. Exercise of 
authority may be a tyranny; and there has been 
tyrannous assertion of false authority in the Church. 
Yet there is a true authority which is only laying on 
the shoulders of faithful servants the easy yoke of 
Christ. In the service which involves recognition of 
Him as Master and Lord lies the secret of perfect 
freedom. 

(4) Thought of God also involves consciousness of 
the mystical character of the Church's life. The 
lifting up of hearts unto our Lord involves the spirit 
of prayer, the habit of worship, the seeking of Divine 
realities through human and material means and signs, 
sacramental activity. The Catholic-minded are essen- 
tially mystics. In modern times, emphasis on the 
Catholic idea has often meant chiefly * this, that in 

Amazon River is three hundred thousand miles long. Say it after 
me." And they all did. The length of the Amazon was a matter 
of indifference to him: his own reputation for infallibility was all- 
important. He was determined to maintain the latter, and believed 
he did so, even though there were dangers of excessive irrigation in 
South America! Yet all the time the Amazon pursued its compara- 
tively limited course. Ecclesiastical infallibility has sometimes 
resembled that of this uneasy schoolmaster. The Roman tendency 
to rule has striven to dominate the complexities of truth and the 
complications of life, even laws of Nature which are refractory when 
not controlled by being obeyed. Yet the earth has moved, as 
Galileo muttered, and has carried even Rome along with it. In 
the same way many Protestant prophets, caring more for definiteness 
than for accuracy, have often sacrificed paramount claims of truth. 



48 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

the Church and in all life we may be conscious of the 
special action of the Spirit of God, and may lay hold 
on spiritual things which belong to eternal life. Cathol- 
icism is alive to the meaning of Whitsunday. Belief 
in the Church is merely consequence of belief in the 
Holy Spirit, as belief in the Holy Spirit is consequent 
upon belief in our Lord. A true Catholic is one who 
does not regard the Descent of the Holy Spirit at 
Pentecost as a mystifying version of some ancient 
event with which we have little practical concern, but 
who sees in it the inauguration of the era in which we 
ourselves live, the explanation of those things which 
chiefly concern us. His type and habit of mind is con- 
stitutionally deductive. He draws all inferences from 
Divine premises, is concerned primarily with first 
principles, and, in thinking first of God and then of 
the world in relation to God, follows the normal order 
of religious thought. "In the beginning was the 
Word; and the Word was with God; and the Word 
was God." There is the preliminary statement of the 
typical mystic. It is in the writings of St. John, in 
the vision of one who was preeminently the Seer or 
Divine, in the practical applications of the disciple 
whom Jesus loved, who had drawn closest to the heart 
of the Master, that we have the best expression of 
those principles and that order of thought to which 
the name Catholic can be best applied. There is 
more than this in St. John, as there is in St. Paul: 
but as mystic, St. John may be taken as classical 
example of what is illustrated and expressed by the 
Catholic type of Christian. The Catholic principle 
stands for the Divine side of truth and of life. This 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 49 

is only one side, unnatural isolation of which may 
lead to error: but it is a necessary side of all truth; 
and it is the side which stands first. 



II 

The name Protestant, which has a history of almost 
four hundred years, and the religious movement in 
modern times with which it is associated, have chiefly 
to do with the human side of things. It has had four 
different meanings. Originally it was synonymous 
with Lutheran. The German princes who signed a 
protest against the revocation of an edict of tolera- 
tion of Lutherans, sent to the Emperor Charles V, 
at the Diet of Speier in 1529, were known as "the 
Protestants" and their party as "the protestant party." 
Eventually the name was given to all Lutherans, who 
were thereby distinguished not only from adherents 
of the Pope, but also from followers of Zwingli and 
Calvin, who were called "Reformed." In the latter 
part of the sixteenth century the name acquired its 
second meaning by adoption in England to indicate 
the Church of England party. "Protestant" in 
England meant Anglican as distinct from both Papist 
and Puritan. Later, especially during the eighteenth 
century, it came to be commonly used as generic name 
for all western Christians who were not Roman Catho- 
lics; and this third sense of non-Roman quickly 
passed with some into the fourth of non-Catholic. 
It is still used in different senses. Lutherans still 
claim it in some places as especially their own. Angli- 
cans still use it in a somewhat vaguer sense than it had 
4 



50 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

first in England. By some it is still used to express 
repudiation of papal claims without indicating repudia- 
tion of the historic Church; by others it is a synonym 
for the rejection of almost everything ancient for the 
sake of fresh beginnings. 

In history, Protestantism has stood positively for 
the expression of certain great truths, for (1) individu- 
alism in religion, individual responsibility, individual 
right, individual importance; for (2) fulness and free- 
dom of life, spiritual liberty as contrasted with eccle- 
siastical servitude: for (3) practical and progressive 
philanthropy. The achievements of the nations of 
northern Europe during the last three centuries, all 
of them for the most part under Protestant influences, 
have exhibited the positive strength of the religious 
motive. Strong men, intent on accomplishing good 
purposes for themselves and for their fellows, have 
made an impression on modern history, which assures 
transmission of many blessings to posterity. Protes- 
tantism has been the informing spirit of a democratic 
age; and most of the special blessings the world owes 
to this democratic age may be not unjustly ascribed 
to its influence. Self-development and class-protection 
are ideals of the time; and of both in the sphere of 
religion, Protestantism is the most obvious expression. * 
In this connection it is necessary merely to emphasize 
that on the whole the Protestant idea is the human 
idea, and that the strength of Protestantism is the 

^ Such statement as 1 can make of this fact will be found in a 
paper on The Achievements and Failures of Protestantism published 
several years ago. Kinsman: Principles of Anglicanism pp. 127- 
135. 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 51 

strength of humanitarianism. At the end of the 
Middle Ages the world needed a healthy human touch. 
The Reformation aimed at giving something healthy 
and human, though it must be admitted that its 
touches were sometimes laid on with a sledge-hammer. 
The positive principles of Protestantism made their 
mark: their eflFects are with us; and the world can 
never lose them. They have been wrought into the 
warp and woof of the social fabric of the stronger 
nations in the modern world; and their influence is 
daily more apparent in places and peoples which have 
only come indirectly under it. There is no danger 
now of losing grip of the great principles for which 
the reformers had to struggle. The fights of three 
centuries ago have been won. We can rest on the 
laurels of others and be thankful. 

But there is another side to the history. In its 
origin Protestantism found itself in an attitude of 
antagonism to the prevailing standards of Christianity. 
It had to attack and destroy abuses, and had to criti- 
cise the whole system to which abuses had become 
attached. At every stage in its history has the chief 
output of Protestant energy been displayed in its 
onslaught on existing institutions. It is essentially 
combative, offensive, destructive, fighting not only 
for a cause but also more or less for love of the fray. 
The name, indicating constitutional opposition, has 
possibly aggravated the tendency by suggesting that 
strenuous fault-finding is essential to religion. At 
any rate, one marked result of the influence has been 
an epidemic of chronic cantankerousness. One of 
the most painful things in modern religious history is 



52 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

the fact that the religious ideal of many people is loud- 
mouthed denunciation, the exhibition of all unchari- 
tableness in angry and ungoverned speech. Men 
who are gentlemen in all private relations, civil in 
business, fairly decent in politics, are utterly intolerant 
and intolerable when it comes to matters of religion. 
Preaching the Gospel has been identified with indis- 
criminate abuse; and there are still places in which 
"the preaching voice" is the vocal embodiment of 
bad temper. There are many whose chief idea of 
religious zeal is expression of discontent. The first 
Protestants made a common attack on the Pope, but 
they soon found in each other even more convenient 
targets for their missiles of invective. There is no 
form of Protestantism which does not retain something 
of this habit of opprobrium. To quote the moderate 
language of an eminent divine of the Free Church of 
Scotland: ''In its original form Protestantism repre- 
sented a criticism of traditional Christianity. On the 
strength of a new and immediate apprehen,sion of the 
mercy of God in Christ, it was critical of the Catholic 
institutional Christianity in all its aspects. In modern 
times it has come to a clearer consciousness of itself, 
and is not merely critical in relation to Catholicism, 
but critical simpUciter — critical in the sense in which 
the philosophy of Kant is critical. The principle of crit- 
icism is innate in it and inseparable from it. Its own 
constructions, whether they be speculative or practi- 
cal, systems of theology or of church-order and govern- 
ment, are permanently subject to criticism. The 
process never ceases. Protestantism constructs noth- 
ing which it does not disintegrate and reconstruct. 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 53 

The interpretations of its faith which it gives are 
subject to incessant revision: the intellectual and moral 
structures which it rears for its habitation — its creeds 
and confessions, its churches and institutes — can 
never win an authority which enables them to defy 
the spirit which produced them. The system of 
thought and things which Protestantism is engaged in 
building is a system which is perpetually being renewed 
in all its parts." ^ This admirably states also the 
characteristic tentativeness of Protestantism, its incon- 
clusiveness, and its instability. It is to its credit that 
it encourages suspense of judgment, reverent agnosti- 
cism, unwillingness to dogmatize and be wise beyond 
what is written; but it is a hampering limitation that 
it often shrinks from definite conviction, hesitates to 
be wise even within the limits of what is written, and 
often displays the temper of Jannes and Jambres, "ever 
learning, yet never able to come to a knowledge of the 
truth." 

A teacher occupying a very high position has said 
that our "upward-pointing spires" are like interroga- 
tion-points, expressing man's irrepressible queries con- 
cerning God and the world. This they are; but they 
are something more. They are also aflBrmative indices 
of the source of knowledge, and signs also of definite 
answers to the questioning instincts of men. The 
teacher to whom I have referred has also said: "The 
Church does not represent a structural part of human- 
ity. It represents that spiritual part which does not 
seek expression in the form of government or even in 

^ Dk. James Denney on The Constructive Tosh oj Protestantism 
in the Constructive Quarterly, No. 2, pp. 213f. 



54 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

forms of society, but seeks expression in its search for 
God, in its search for the ultimate explanation of life, 
in its search for the ultimate fountains of the human 
spirit. The things that are outside of us and beyond 
our control and higher than we are, are the things 
by which we seek to measure ourselves; and every 
church is a sort of attempt to discover a standard." 
That well states a fact and is a good Protestant 
utterance; but it does not tell the whole truth 
about the Church, and is not completely Christian. 
Man's gropings after God are necessary, and in his re- 
ligious associations they find natural expression. The 
churches do represent the normal "struggling aims" 
upward of humanity. But to state this alone un- 
guardedly is to ignore the fact that Christianity is a 
revelation, that it represents, first of all, not the 
upward struggles of men but the downward reaching 
of God to assist men in their struggles. It is Protes- 
tant to think that "every church is a sort of an attempt 
to discover a standard": but it is Christian to think 
of the Church established by God as "pillar and ground 
of the truth," disclosing a standard. The New Testa- 
ment presentation of the Church emphasizes the very 
point that such a statement as that cited seems to 
deny, namely, that the Church represents something 
normal and structural in humanity, that the laws of 
spiritual life are analogous to laws of all life, and that 
spiritual truth and grace are gained through incorpora- 
tion into spiritual society. The religious life is more 
than search: it is discovery. It is more than asking 
of questions: it is receiving of answers. Our Lord 
bids us "Seek"; but He promises that we "shall find," 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 55 

that to our persistent knocking the doors of knowledge 
shall be opened. Moreover, what comes from Him 
is to be received as certain and final. Christianity is 
a search after God, as earnest a search as the world 
has ever seen: but, more than that, it is the manifesta- 
tion of God given in response to the quest of faith. It 
is an unsatisfactory statement of the substance of the 
Christian life to say of all Christians, "They are look- 
ing for a foothold, for some firm ground of faith on 
which to walk." This has been true of all of them, 
but fortunately it is also true that many of them have 
found what they were looking for, and have come to 
share the confidence in the foundation of faith in 
Christ expressed by such discoverers of truth as St. 
Paul and St. John. 

In imperfect apprehension of the Church-principle 
may be seen one of the chief limitations of Protestant- 
ism. In its extreme forms it wholly denies this, since 
it assumes the formation of the Church from below. 
Those who have wished to start Christianity afresh, 
whether expressly undertaking a task of invention, 
or claiming merely to have made rediscoveries, have 
been concerned not with perpetuation of a Church 
existent and of transcendent authority, but with the 
formation of new churches and with self-determined 
plans of individual salvation, wholly independent of 
any church other than an aggregation for convenience 
of like-minded units. The negative tendency invari- 
ably halts short of the whole truth. Its opposition to 
authority, its restiveness at the mystical and super- 
natural, its content with the commonplace, are all 
signs of failure to rise to the level of the highest attain- 



56 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

ment. Its strength lies in the safeguarding of every 
form of individual right, in efforts to uplift the down- 
trodden, in the insistence on healthy happiness for 
humanity, in the exhibition of good practical common- 
sense. But there are things calling for higher faculties 
than those of common sense; and man is not wholly 
himself if he fails to use them. It is a weakness in 
any movement that it should disparage social facts, 
rights, and responsibilities, and that it should tend to 
throw down whatever transcends mediocrity. To a 
great extent Protestant influences have tended toward 
these things. Any one who takes broad views of 
human life and history can not fail to see, in reviewing 
the whole course of Protestant development, that, 
with positive strength which the world could not 
afford to lose, there have been elements of weakness, 
suppressions and distortions of truth, of which the 
world cannot too soon get rid. 

Ill 

The two conceptions. Catholic and Protestant, are 
not necessarily mutually exclusive. So far as Protes- 
tant stands for religious individualism and Catholic 
for the corporate conception of salvation, there is no 
contradiction: the ideas explain and supplement each 
other. So far as Protestant stands for freedom of 
personal sonship, and Catholic for the spiritual author- 
ity of the Church, there is no contradiction: each 
conception balances and interprets the other. Cathol- 
icism does not deny individual responsibility; and 
Protestantism need not fail to see that the individual 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 57 

only realizes himself through society. There ought 
to be no hesitation about submission to authority, 
if authority represent our Lord, since submission to 
Him means freedom. So far as Catholic stands for 
the Divine and insistence on thinking of those things 
which are above, there is no inconsistency with the 
Protestant stand for the human and close attention 
to the actual things and conditions of earth. Both 
types of thought have shown tendencies to exaggera- 
tion; and history gives many stern warnings. There 
have been confusions of Divine authority with eccle- 
siastical tyranny, identifications of Divine sovereignty 
with the kingdoms of this world, unwarranted claims to 
infallibility by individuals, unmindful that the promise 
of guidance into all truth was made to the Church as 
a whole. All these have disguised the Catholic con- 
ception and have made the CathoKc name to many 
minds a synonym for tyranny and superstition. On 
the other hand. Protestantism has too often meant an- 
archy, the disintegration of the Church, an indifference, 
if not hostility, to the supernatural, which has given 
a great impulse to unbelief. In all Protestant coun- 
tries there have been driftings away from New Testa- 
ment Christianity, tendencies to conceive only a remote 
humanitarian Christ, at times a general tendency to 
scepticism. Protestantism has too often been a sort 
of apotheosis of selfishness, and instead of represent- 
ing the spiritual liberty of Paul the Apostle, has been 
little more than the chronic kicking against pricks of 
Saul the persecutor. Reaction has now set in, and the 
common appeal for the Living Church of the Living 
Christ indicates that the world is fast outgrowing the 



58 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

cramping tendencies of a movement which would keep 
minds and souls groping at low levels. Carefully con- 
sidered on the positive side, it may be demonstrated 
that the things which Protestants and Catholics 
supremely value are merely different sides of the same 
truth: yet there is an antithesis between the two which 
ought not to be ignored. If one stands for the sacra- 
mental conception of the Church and life, and the 
other for the denial of these, the one for the Kingship 
of the ascended Christ, the other for the denial of every 
authority except that of private judgment, there is a 
contradiction between which individuals and churches 
must deJBnitely choose. And there is often this sharp 
alternative. 

The difference between Catholicism and Protestant- 
ism is best seen in their respective presentations of 
the Church. In the main it may be said that Cathol- 
icism stands for the Divine side, Protestantism for 
the human. ^ The Church is a Sacrament and has 
both sides. The outward and visible human society 
is the means of the inward and spiritual activities of 
the ascended Christ. The two conceptions approach 
the Church from opposite sides. Each has hold of 
an essential truth. Each supplements the other and 
needs the other to protect itself. The antithesis serves 
to demonstrate the Church's twofold, sacramental char- 

1 This distinction may seem very arbitrary. It is plainly not in 
accord with many facts. Luther was more concerned for spiritual 
things in 1519 than Leo X. So-called Catholics have often been 
the worst of worldlings: Protestants have often been the most 
spiritual of mystics. Yet as a generalization concerning theories 
and tendencies the distinction may stand. 



i 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 59 

acter. There has been, and always may be, mystical 
union between men and God, actual contact of the 
earthly and the eternal. The Church is the meeting- 
point of the two. 

There is only one place in the Bible which narrates 
an attempt to reach Heaven and discover God by 
efforts made merely from below, such as would corres- 
pond to purely humanitarian conceptions of the Church. 
An effort was once made on purely individualistic and 
congregational principles; and it failed. "And they 
said. Go to, let us build a city and a tower, whose top 
may reach unto heaven, and let us make a name, lest 
we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole 
earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and 
the tower which the children of men builded. And 
the Lord said. Behold, the people is one, and they have 
all one language, and this they begin to do: and now 
nothing will be restrained from them which they have 
imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there 
confound their language, that they may no more under- 
stand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered 
them abroad from thence upon the face of the whole 
earth; and they left off to build the city. Therefore 
is the name of it called Babel, because the Lord did 
there confound the language of all the earth; and 
from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon 
the face of all the earth.'' ^ "Our unhappy divisions" 
are the modern counterpart of Babel; and they are 
largely due to the same cause. A tower to reach 
Heaven cannot be built up by men from below; 
and the attempt by men to discover a "common 
^ Gen. xi: 4-9. 



60 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 

Christianity" or invent a "new theology" must always 
result in confounding of language — any men, many 
minds. Religious individualism can never arrive at 
unity of truth. 

The Scriptural description of the City of God 
represents the converse of this. It is not reared from 
below, but descends from above. "And there came 
one of the seven angels . . . and talked with me say- 
ing, Come hither, I will show thee the Bride, the 
Lamb's Wife. And he carried me away in spirit to a 
great and high mountain, and shewed me that great 
city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven 
from God, having the glory of God; and her light was 
like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper 
stone, clear as crystal. . . . And I saw no temple 
therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb 
are the temple of it. And the City had no need of the 
sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of 
God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. 
And the nations of them that are saved shall walk in 
the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their 
glory and honour into it. And the gates of it shall 
not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night 
there. And they shall bring the glory and honour of 
the nations into it. And there shall in no wise enter 
into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever 
worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they that 
are written in the Lamb's book of life."^ That is 
the description of the Church given by St. John the 
Divine; and the principle of his description can never 
be ignored. The Church has its origin, its light, its 
1 Rev. xxi: 9-11, 22-27. 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 61 

life, from God. The nations and the kings come into 
it, and, as inhabitants, in one sense, make it a City; 
but it is the City of God sent down for men, not a 
city or temple of men built for God. It is open to all 
mankind. "And the Spirit and the Bride say Come. 
And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever 
will, let him drink of the water of life freely."^ 

^Rev. xxii; 17. 



SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER 

The sacramental principle which underlies the 
Christian religion gives the best clue to the interpreta- 
tion of Christian history. It has been considered in 
its bearings on intellectual problems as determining 
laws of Christian thought. In a similar way it may 
be considered in its effects on character. It is common- 
place to assert that the Christian life is sacramental; 
yet apprehension of the truth always opens new vistas 
of thought and feeling. The Christian secret is that 
life may be shared with our Lord. The highest thing 
in human experience, that interaction of personal 
force, that actual sharing of life in all its phases with 
another, which we call love, is raised to a point beyond 
itself when we learn that what is possible between 
man and man is possible also between man and God. 
Successive generations of the faithful have found by 
experiment that there is literal possibility of sharing 
life with our Lord. By accepting His yoke, we may 
have Him for Companion and Workfellow. A yoke 
is made for two oxen: and our Lord's injunction to 
take His yoke upon us is not merely an appeal to bear 
a burden, but an offer of assistance. To bear His 
yoke means merely to harness ourselves for the heavy 
dragging of life in such a way as to have Him bear 
half our burden and do half our work. He is our true 
Yokefellow; and with Him for weal or woe we go 
shares. If human nature, created in the image of God, 



SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER 63 

is itself a sacrament, its ideal activity is twofold. The 
ideal man opens hi^ life God ward and man ward; and 
each form of activity increases power for the other. 
He that loveth God will love his brother also: and he 
that loveth his brother whom he hath seen is in the 
surest way of loving God Whom he hath not seen. 

There are possibilities of abnormal, partial develop- 
ment. Some men give themselves wholly to con- 
templation; monks of Mount Athos intent on seeing 
"the uncreated light," Buddhists seeking to attain 
Nirvana by extinction of the human and earthly, 
careworn souls, utterly weary of earth, who have 
tried to forget all about it and live in imagination in a 
state which has not yet arrived. These make the 
mistake of thinking that absorption in the Divine life 
evacuates human life of meaning, or that mere impa- 
tient, impractical "living in the clouds" is equivalent 
to living "with Christ in heavenly places." There are 
others who think that the one duty is to be busy with 
things of earth. This is plausible and practical. 

"Do the duty nearest. 
Though it's dull at whiles. 
Helping when you meet them. 
Lame dogs over stiles." 

There is no doubt of the primary importance of doing 
with might the task nearest one's hand. But it is a 
mistake to think only of things of earth, to be cumbered 
with cares, to keep eyes always down, and to plod along 
on low levels. Labor are est or are is true both ways. 
Prayer is work, the highest and most useful work man 
can do : and work is prayer, the most sincere form by 
which aspiration can express itself. Yet it is wrong 



64 SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER 

to assume either that prayer is the only work we have 
to perform, or that the place of prayer in worship may 
be taken by daily drudgery. The highest life con- 
sists not of religious abstraction alone, nor of absorp- 
tion in labor, but in their combination. In the 
highest examples of Christian manhood and woman- 
hood the two things go together. Height of aspira- 
tion and breadth of sympathy mutually magnify. 
The more intense the mystical devotion to God, the 
more keen, penetrating, and painstaking the faculties 
for service: the more varied the benevolent activities, 
the more alive to the love of God. Expenditure of 
energy either way seems to give greater power for the 
other form of activity. We can touch God, and touch 
men, directly; yet we touch God most closely through 
men, and through God as medium get closest to men's 
hearts. 

The twofold aspect of duty resembles God's twofold 
relation to the world. God is above the world and 
beyond it. He created it, and it cannot contain His 
infinity. He is transcendent. Yet He is in all parts 
of it and sustains it. He is also immanent. Tran- 
scendence and immanence pertain equally to the 
Godhead. It may be said that man has duties of tran- 
scendence and of immanence. He is bound for the sake 
of himself and of the work which he has to do, at times 
to get above the world and out of it: but for the same 
reasons he must be ever ready to be close to it and in 
the thick of its struggles. He must ascend the Mount 
of Transfiguration, to be delivered from the disquietude 
of this world and to behold the King in His beauty; 
but he must keep his faith when he descends the Mount 



SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER 65 

to cast out devils that await him at its foot. The 
two commandments which comprise the substance of 
all the injunctions of the Law and all the aspirations 
of Psalmists and Prophets, represent the ethical sacra- 
ment, the complementary sides of duty, human and 
Divine. The true Christian is like the Skylark. 

"Ethereal Minstrel! Pilgrim of the sky! 
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound? 
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye 
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground? 
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will. 
Those quivering wings composed, that music still! 

**To the last point of vision, and beyond, 
Moimt, daring Warbler! that love-prompted strain 
('Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond) 
Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain: 
Yet mightst thou seem, proud privilege! to sing 
All independent of the leafy spring. 

"Leave to the Nightingale her shady wood, 
A privacy of glorious light is thine: 
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood 
Of harmony, with instinct more divine: 
Type of the wise who soar, but never roam. 
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home." ^ 

Character is better described by personal illustra- 
tion than by verbal outline. The lives of all the 
saints show well the ethical counterpoise of which we 
have been thinking. St. Paul was a mystic, "caught 
up" at times "to the third heaven," "unto paradise, 
where he heard unspeakable words which it is not 
lawful for a man to utter"; yet he was a man with 
1 Wordsworth 
5 



66 SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER 

unusual grip of personal and practical detail. Simi- 
larly, St. John was possessed by the two thoughts that 
"God is Light" and "God is Love," but absorbed in 
them only so that he saw the necessity of "walking in 
the light" and of "loving one another." The best 
Marthas have found plenty of time to sit at Jesus' 
feet, and the best Marys to do their full share of the 
housework. The noblest characters have had eyes 
firm-fixed on heaven, yet have kept feet firm-planted 
on earth. Let me speak of two lives, completely 
surrendered to the service of God, and yet singularly 
responsive to the common claims of men. 

One of the most winsome examples of sacramental 
character is St. Athanasius. Of all the heroes of faith, 
there is none that can better stand tests. As Richard 
Hooker quaintly says of him, "Only in Athanasius 
there was nothing observed throughout the course 
of that long tragedy, other than such as very well 
became a wise man to do and a righteous to suffer. 
So that this was the plain condition of those times: 
all the world against Athanasius, and Athanasius 
against it: half a hundred years spent in doubtful 
trial which of the two in the end would prevail, the 
side that had all, or the side which had no friend but 
God and death, the One the defender of his innocency, 
the other, the finisher of all his troubles." ^ He is 
a colossal figure in history, as Harnack describes 
him, "standing like a rock in the sea"; yet there 
is always a delicacy and grace about him, so that it 
does not seem incongruous to remember that he was 
"one of the little great men of history," or to imagine 
^ Hooker: Ecclesiastical Polity , V: xlii: 5. 



SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER 67 

"That slight form and beauteous grace 
Of our true Father Athanase." ^ 

He was a typical Alexandrian, preeminently a theolo- 
gian, intent on penetrating Divine truth, conscious 
always of life's eternal context. He had that quality 
of intellectual directness which goes with clarity of 
spiritual vision. Though but a youn,g man when the 
Arian controversy broke, his eagle eye first detected 
the real issue. Through all superficial details and 
evasive sophistries he saw the point at stake, that 
Arius would not admit that Jesus Christ is really 
God; that the whole Christian system is based on 
the assumption that He is; and that this truth is the 
heart of revelation. By force of circumstances, in 
spite of his comparative youth, he became foremost 
champion of the doctrine expressed in the Nicene 
Creed. In defense of this he spent a long life of hard- 
ship: injustice, slander, exile, prolonged uncertainty, 
incessant discomfort, went to form his lot. All his 
life was spent in controversy, in the defense of one 
cause, one position. The circumstances of the life 
were such as almost inevitably force a man to encase 
himself in a shell of hardness, induce intellectual 
rigidity, intensify obstinacy, and make a man narrow, 
even if not bitter. A man who has to fight a battle 
can think of little else, and judges men as they help or 
hinder him in the one thing to which he has devoted 
himself. Controversy tends to confine thought and 
sympathy within the narrow range of one idea. It 
would not have been strange if Athanasius, champion 

^ Bright: "First Exile of St. Athanasius" in Hymns and Other 
Verses. Et passim. 



68 SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER 

of a theological doctrine and for fifty years perpetual 
confessor for his faith, had been able to think of noth- 
ing but the one main object of his life. Nothing of 
the kind. Both in regard to principles and persons 
he always showed poise and patience. He could see 
other people's points of view, was not tenacious of 
words if the things they stood for were protected, could 
see the unfairnesses and exaggerations of his friends, 
and never seemed to lose a serenity and sweetness 
which came of his viewing the turmoils of earth from 
the standpoint of heavenly calm. Attacks on himself 
never made him fretful or bitter. 

"He saw the mark their hatred sought; . 

They struck through him at what he taught." 

The one thing he cared for was religion: his whole life 
was given to defense of our Lord's Divinity, but he 
was not merely concerned for a dogma or system. 
The heart of his religion was personal devotion to our 
Lord. His concern for truth was not for the triumph 
of a position or party, but for the value of the truth 
to the souls of those under his care. 

"'Twas not the mere polemic zeal 
For Council or for Creed: 
For both he set his face like steel 

To serve the Church's need; 
But both were loved for His dear sake. 
Whose rights were in that strife at stake." 

As Theologian, as Bishop, as Doctor of the Church, 
as Confessor, as Champion of the Faith, in every duty 
and condition which put him into relation to God, 
he seemed to show measures of Divine patience, jus- 



SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER 69 

tice, and compassion. Threats and danger did not 
deprive him of calmness. "I shall withdraw for a 
time until the tyranny be overpast," was all he said 
after one scene of violence against him and his people. 
"It is a little cloud and will soon pass," was his com- 
ment when for a fourth time he was driven into exile. 

"He, sweetly strong, and strongly great, 
Ejiew how to strive and how to wait." 

The poise of his public life had its counterpart in 
his private relations. Gregory Nazianzen notes that 
he was "quick in sympathy, pleasant in conversation, 
and still more pleasant in temper." He was "helpful 
to all Christians of every class and age, especially the 
poor," very adaptable, "able to keep on a level with 
commonplace minds, yet to soar high above the more 
aspiring."^ He was very affectionate in all personal 
relations, sensitive — which made his tenacity the 
more remarkable, endowed always with a quaint and 
quiet humor, a remarkable example of Pauline versa- 
tility in being "all things to all men." 

"One image, stamped on heart and mind. 

To make, inform, direct. 
Those richly- varied powers combined 

For one supreme effect; 
And *all in all' he well might be. 
Who in that Light would all things see.'* 

To him in a supreme degree was given "grace by the 
confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory 
of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine 
Majesty to worship the Unity"; and with this faith 
^ Gregory Nazianzen: Panegyric on Athanasius. 



70 SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER 

was he given power in an especial degree to minister 
to ''all sorts and conditions of men." 

St. Athanasius was a theologian. Let us take from 
our own time the example of an ecclesiastic. It is only 
two years since the Church of England lost one of the 
most gifted of its Bishops, William Edward Collins, 
Bishop of Gibraltar. Among men of our Communion, 
Bishop Collins was noted for his clearness of thought, 
his wide knowledge as one of the best-trained historical 
scholars of the English Church, his sense of theological 
proportion, and his powers of ready application. He 
made a deep impression on the English Church and 
on our own people at the Pan-Anglican Congress of 
1908. As Bishop of Gibraltar he had charge of all 
the English chapels and colonies of English people in 
the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. This 
brought him in touch with peoples and prelates of the 
Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches and 
gave him a varied experience of the Christian world 
of today. With unusual knowledge of past and pres- 
ent he had developed very highly the ecclesiastical 
sense. Probably no Anglican Churchman had more 
direct knowledge of a great number of ecclesiastical 
affairs than Bishop Collins. His life was given in a 
unique way to "the care of all the churches." He was 
a man of saintly life, and came to have that trans- 
parent look of the Spirit shining through matter of 
fine-spun texture, which is given to some faces. In 
a Spanish Cathedral, a crowd who saw his "wonderful 
face" thronged to kiss his hand, although they knew 
before he told them that he was "the English Cathol- 
icus." All who knew him recognized him as one of 



SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER 71 

the most entirely devoted men of the Church of our 
own day. 

And with this went wonderful capacity for human 
interests and sympathies. He did heroic work in the 
rescue and care of sufferers from the earthquake at 
Messina; he himself anointed the sores of a crowd of 
Russian pilgrims on a tramp-steamer of the Black 
Sea, sufferers, it turned out, from confluent small-pox. 
With the simplicity of real greatness he had a perfect 
genius for children. Here is a characteristic reference, 
relating to the time immediately after the death of 
his wife. 

"But it wasn't Judith only the Bishop thought for. He worked 
hour after hour upon masses of papers and letters; but his idea of 
rest was helping other people. He taught Doris about poetry, 
talked to *his own little daughter Tita,' as he called our second girl, 
whom he had confirmed, about all her hopes and dearest dreams; 
and when our subaltern son arrived from India, the Bishop and he 
were talking so late at night in his room, that I had to sit up to see 
that they really did go to bed at last. I had not thought that any 
human being could be so heart-broken, so newly bereft of the love 
of his life, and yet throw himself so marvellously into everyone else's 
concerns." ^ 

Concentration on ecclesiastical problems could not 
crowd out personal sympathies. 

So in every noble life. The higher the plane along 
which the soul habitually moves, the greater the power 
of particularity in the discharge of homely duties. It 
is only contact with God that gives capacity for widest 
and closest contact with men. God is everywhere, 
knows all, and loves all. Omniscience and omni- 
presence are merely formidable synonyms for sympathy. 
^ Especially p. 17. 



72 SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER 

Human sympathies are not perfect unless they gain 
tone from the Divine knowledge and compassion. 
That life only is the best expression of human instinct 
and human capacity which has most completely 
surrendered itself to God. 

St. John in his vision of God throned in Heaven saw 
before the throne "a sea," "a sea of glass like unto 
crystal," symbol of purity, peace, the utter stillness 
of reverent worship in the immediate presence of God. 
It may suggest to us that the sea of humanity, with 
its restlessness and tossings under influence of gusts 
and storms, may be purified and pacified in God's 
presence. In the judgment scene, St. John saw the 
same sea flashing with avenging flames, "a sea of 
glass mingled with fire." Anger at evil is an aspect 
of love: zeal for the Lord's cause is a consequence 
of adoring worship. The sea before the Throne not 
only reflects but shares the action of the Almighty. 
In the same way may humanity be permeated by the 
flames of the Spirit as the glassy sea flashed with the 
fires of judgment. The contact may be painful, 
purgatorial; but thence comes the secret of activity. 

"The keen sanctity. 
Which with its effluence, like a glory, clothes 
And circles round the Crucified, has seized 
And scorched and shrivelled it; and now it lies 
Passive and still before the awful Throne. 
O happy, suffering soul, for it is safe. 
Consumed, yet quickened, by the glance of God." ^ 

1 Newman: Dream of Gerontius. 



THE IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 

"And the City had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to 
shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is 
the light thereof. And the nations of them that are saved shall 
walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their 
glory and honom- into it. And the gates of it shall not be shut 
at all by day: and there shall be no night there. And they shall 
bring the glory and honour of the nations into it." Revelation 
xxi: 23-26. 

That is the vision and prophecy of St. John the 
Divine of national participation in the life of the City 
and Kingdom of God. Kings and nations of the earth 
shall bring their glories and honours into it; and in 
the light of the City, which emanates from God only, 
shall those glories and honours be wonderfully trans- 
figured. As in the whole process of salvation, there 
is to be both giving and receiving. The kings and 
nations, like their prototypes the Magi at Bethlehem, 
are to bring to God treasures of every sort; and these, 
consecrated by God, they are to receive back, made 
effective by Him for every good purpose. 

The history of the Christian centuries has brought 
many illustrations of this. Salvation is of the Jews; 
and to the Jew first was preached the message of salva- 
tion. Into the Church they brought a consciousness of 
the One Holy God and a quickness of spiritual faculty 
possessed by no other people in the ancient world. 



74 IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 

God's Son incarnate was born of a Jewish mother. 
The foundations of His Church were laid in and by 
Israehtes chosen by our Lord to form the nucleus of 
it. "The wall of the City had twelve foundations, 
and in them the names of the twelve Apostles of the 
Lamb." The beginnings of Christian history were 
made of what was given to God by the Jews. And 
in those Jews who gave themselves and their treasures 
unreservedly to the service of God as revealed in Christ, 
were realized the promises made to their fathers. In 
Abraham's seed all nations of the earth were blessed, 
when our Lord took flesh of Abraham's race, and when 
news of Him, the Gospel of salvation, was conveyed 
primarily to the world by those who were Abraham's 
sons. The ideal Jewish character is seen in the Blessed 
Virgin, in St. John, in St. Peter, in Nathanael, in those 
who received the Jewish Messiah when He came to 
His own people and His own place. The best of 
Judaism and the best of Jewish character were 
brought into the Church; and the blessing it received 
brought highest glory and honour to the race which 
gave. 

Next, the Greeks, in whose tongue the message of 
salvation made its way to the world at large, were 
summoned to bring their peculiar honours and glories 
into the City of God. They had highly developed 
intellectual powers, accuracy and subtlety of thought 
and expression, a fresh and wholesome enjoyment of 
physical life, aspirations after ideal humanity, the 
qualities of a race whose crowning product was philos- 
ophy. All these faculties and capacities were they 
called to use in our Lord's service. From the keen 



IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 75 

penetration of Greek minds came the Theology of the 
Church; from Greek Councils came in the Greek 
language the classic statements of the Faith, the 
Creeds; from Greek sympathy with all that makes the 
life of man came the application of Christian prin- 
ciple to the life of society. To men of Greek speech 
after the men of Jewish blood the world owes its chief 
obligations for the spread of the Christian religion. 
And this service of Christ meant freedom for the Greek, 
the fullest opportunity for developing the special quali- 
ties that came by temperament and environment. 
In the Catechetical School of Alexandria, the chief 
home of Christian philosophy, were developed men 
who represented not only the highest type of Christian 
intellect, but also the crown of specifically Greek 
excellence. Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius, and 
Cyril are types not only of Egyptian Christianity, 
but also of highly spiritualized Greek thought, men in 
whom may be seen the intellectual qualities of St. 
Paul, and also of Plato. The Greeks gave much to 
the Church, and they gained more. 

The Romans also in that first age received a call to 
service, and after a time there was Roman response. 
The men of the Ruling City with temper and gifts for 
conquest, organization, amalgamation, imperial rule, 
who had imposed a type and tendency on many of the 
peoples brought under their sway, were bidden to 
surrender their honours and their glories at the feet 
of Christ. Both in the first days and in succeeding 
ages the Church has owed much to the Roman genius 
for practical eflSciency on a large scale, the faculty 
of combining for working purposes heterogeneous and 



76 IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 

conflicting elements. The Roman genius was per- 
sonified in the greatest of the Csesars; and the finest 
specimens of the Csesars have been the best of the 
Popes. Leo I, Gregory I, and Nicholas I were not 
only great as Christian leaders and missionaries; 
they were also fine specimens of the distinctively 
Roman character. Rome gave much in the beginning, 
and has always given much, to the Christian cause, 
in spite of inability to check the Roman itch for con- 
quest, ambitious to subject even the Kingdom of 
Christ to the City of the Seven Hills. And Rome 
gained more by discovering that power to rule can 
never be better exerted than in the noblest of causes. 
The Romans were men of force and ambition, which, 
rightly used, are good things. Force may be most 
nobly exerted, and ambition most nobly realized, in 
the stress and strain of the warfare of faith. 

In the Middle Ages the Church sought to gain the 
races of northern Europe, Slavs, Teutons, and Celts. 
Each gave and each gained in the process. The 
Teutonic races, from which most of us derive descent, 
had great possibilities, though at the time of their con- 
version they were rude and uncouth. They possessed 
a sturdy individualism, a capacity for truth, honesty 
and purity, stronger than in the older nations which 
excelled them in social gifts and cultivation of manners. 
The Teuton needed the Church for schooling in the 
use of his special faculties ; and the Church needed the 
Teuton for developing the highest type of fearless 
sincerity and sturdy righteousness. In every age 
have there been examples of the way in which the 
nations have brought glory into the City of God, 



IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 77 

thereby winning for themselves the truest national 
glory. ^ 

But the City of God does not yet contain all the 
glory which the nations of the world can give; nor is 
it yet equipped for work with that elBSiciency which 
from more complete absorption of the nations it may 
gain. We must hope and expect that great good will 
come to the Christian world from fuller development 
of the great reserve force of the Slavic nations, already 
pledged to the service of Christ, but not yet effective 
to their possible limits. There is much good also in 
store for the Church in what it may receive from the 
nations of the East. China and Japan have not only 
much to gain from Christianity for the working out of 
wonderful national destinies but they have much to 
give of inestimable value. Christianity is at present 
too completely dominated by Western ideas; it needs 
to redress the balance by what may come from the 
East. In every phase of religious life there is some- 
thing sacramental in the Divine-human reciprocity. 
In this respect national conversion is analogous to 
individual. Our Lord bids you, and bids me, "Come." 
He needs each of us. Most surely we need Him. He 
is our Life. So of us all as a people. We Americans 
need the Living Lord; and moreover He needs us 
Americans. 



It is not easy to define or describe the genius of the 
American people, for the reason that, like the melan- 
choly of Jaques, it is "compounded of many simples." 

1 See Church's Gifts of Civilization. 



78 IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 

But that which causes the difficulty suggests also the 
line of possible definition. The American people is 
a composite race, or a race in process of formation 
under conditions which must ultimately produce a 
highly complex compound. That which chiefly dis- 
tinguishes Americans from other peoples comes from 
the fact that the United States is a meeting-point and 
melting-pot for all races of the earth. Each of these 
is making contribution to the mixture out of which 
the American character and civilization will sometime 
issue. There have been many mixed races in the past, 
many a national type and temperament the result 
of fusion, but never the product of a compound so 
completely cosmopolitan. The American people had 
its beginnings in a mixed stock from northern Europe. 
In course of time, the south-European peoples have 
added modifying elements. Now the nations of 
Eastern Europe are contributing their quota of Ameri- 
can citizens; and we need not speculate or prophesy 
of the future influence in America of the peoples of 
Asia and Africa, for that influence is already a fact. 
Most of us look back to lines of ancestors representing 
one or a few kindred nations of Europe. Not many 
of our grandchildren will be able to do the same. A 
century hence the confluent strains of national descent 
will be lost in the main stream of American blood. For 
good or ill, our characteristic qualities are, and are 
more and more to be, those of a composite race. 

Certain consequences of this fact may be specified 
as constituting salient, if not the most peculiar, quali- 
ties of the American people. In the first place, the 
fact of necessary assimilation has produced a habit or 



IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 79 

quality of assimilativeness. Already is there forma- 
tion of national oneness out of international diversity, 
differing from such combination and cooperation of 
races as may be seen elsewhere. There have been 
many examples of amalgamation of races into a politi- 
cal unity. Every Empire the world has ever seen has 
represented a combination of races in which there has 
been intermarriage, reciprocal influence in many ways, 
modification on all sides of racial tendency. In the 
ancient world, the Roman Empire represented not 
only political unity under one irresistible controlling 
force, but a union of peoples which perceptibly modified 
distinctive characteristics of all peoples who formed it. 
In the British and Russian Empires today the same 
thing is true. Each of these world-powers consists of 
an amalgamation of nations distinctly affected by 
their imperial associations. The Englishman, no 
matter how pronounced his insularity, is in many ways 
affected by the fact that the Canadian, the Indian, 
the Australian, and the South African are with him 
fellow-subjects of King George. In a similar, though 
less-marked, degree, is the Slav or Finn in Russia 
affected by his political connection with the Mongols 
of Tartary and Turkestan. But this is different from 
the situation of an American who knows that he has 
English, German, and a dash of French blood in his 
veins, and that it is likely that his descendants will be 
also part Irish and part Italian with chances of strains 
of Negro and Japanese. Whether or not there be 
actual combination of bloods, there is combination of 
peoples in one society which means inevitable influence 
on the educational environment of each and all. There 



80 IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 

is, and is to be, more than amalgamation, more than 
association; there is to be assimilation whereby each 
becomes like the others, the resulting race-product 
having qualities from all the nations because from all 
it has constituent ingredients. This necessitates 
power of appropriation. Americans have developed 
that quality to a high degree. They borrow, adapt, 
and use from all quarters, have formed the eclectic 
habit, are always on the lookout for useful novelties, 
flatter themselves that they know a good thing when 
they see it and know enough to use it when discovered. 
Moreover, they can not only adapt new things to old 
purposes, but can adapt old selves to new surround- 
ings. Assimilation, appropriation, adaptability, are 
facts of common experience which may be cited as 
marks of the national character in process of formation. 
Americans like to think of themselves as having good 
practical common-sense; and they have certainly shown 
a clever inventiveness. They are ambitious to gain 
and to keep a unique place in the world by being effi- 
cient exponents of the prevailing spirit of the age. 
They show, as is natural, the peculiar marks of youth, 
its freshness, energy, openness to new impressions, 
good spirits in the pursuit of new undertakings, the 
vigor and enthusiasm of boyhood, and also at times 
boyish crudeness, impulsiveness, and unsteadiness. 
Youth has limitations as well as strengths; but the 
period of growth and elasticity gives best chance for 
developing those powers which can control the future. 
As youngest of the nations we have an especial call 
to play an important part in the age that is dawning. 
The opportunity is obvious; but presence of oppor- 



IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 81 

tunity does not ensure its use. We need to remember 
that though "America is another name for oppor- 
tunity," it is not yet another name for assured success. 
We have high ambitions. Very well. Let us culti- 
vate the sober steadiness that may realize them. 
We wish the best that there is of every sort. Let us 
remember that the best that is includes and follows 
from the best that has been, and that only by making 
sure of that can we be confident of gaining the better 
that will be. 

The national character must aflFect the national 
religious life, and determine the nature of national 
contribution to Christianity. If the Americans are 
to bring their glories and honours into the City of God, 
they must develop an assimilative, appropriative, 
adaptable Christianity which will use to the utmost 
the opportunities of the present day. If they are ever 
able to dedicate this sort of character to God's service, 
they may hope for a Pauline power of being "all things 
to all men," and ought also in all humility to hope for 
likeness to Him Who was the Catholic Man, the One 
in Whom were summed up all lines of human develop- 
ment, Who, mediator between God and man, was also 
mediator and bond of unity between men themselves. 
"For He is our peace, who hath made both one, and 
hath broken down the middle wall of partition between 
us." He is our peace because He became one of us, 
one with all of us; and we shall share His power, if 
out of experience of differing types and lives we gain 
by humble submission some measures of Divine jus- 
tice and compassion. It would be a great thing — 
and it is not an impossible thing — for American 
6 



82 IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 

Christianity to become another name for sympathy. 
We have the opportunity of learning to be sympathetic, 
because we have the cares, conditions, and confusions 
of the Christian world close about us. We need not 
be told of them; we can know them at first hand, and 
out of this experience by varied contact ought to come 
power of peacemaking usefulness. 

II 

It would seem inevitable that America and any 
form of American Christianity should understand and 
utilize the forces of the Protestant world. The influ- 
ences of the Reformation period have affected the 
social and political, as well as the religious, life erf all 
the western nations; but as belonging wholly to the 
modern period, and itself the product of those influ- 
ences, no country is more obviously under obligation 
to them than the United States. It owes its chief 
debts to men of Protestant associations, to the English 
Cavaliers who migrated to Virginia, to the Puritans 
who made New England, to the Quakers who estab- 
lished Pennsylvania, to the Dutch who made New 
York, to Huguenots in north and south alike, in more 
recent times to the Presbyterians, Methodists, and 
Baptists, who have been chief missionaries in opening 
up the great West. Roman Catholics from France 
and Spain had an important share in the discovery 
and settlement of the New World; but their influence 
counted for comparatively little in the formation of 
peculiarly American institutions. The more telling 
contributions came from the settlers from northern 



IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 83 

Europe. Ireland and Germany, not to speak of the 
aggregate of South-European peoples, have contributed 
to the nation a large proportion of its citizens; but 
these new citizens have had to adapt themselves to 
a government and society in forming which their own 
people had comparatively unimportant shares. For the 
most part the foundations of the American Common- 
wealth are English. The Constitution is a product 
of principles of English government and English law; 
most customs represent the following of English prec- 
edents, although in these Scottish, Dutch, and Irish 
influences have also counted for much; most impor- 
tant of all, the language of the country, and hence 
its literature, is English. This English background 
of American life is a Protestant background.^ What 
must be described as Protestant principles and influ- 
ences have been decisive in determining our national 
beginnings and the course of our national develop- 
ment. It would seem that these must ever hold their 
place, if the general characteristics of our civiliza- 
tion and of our national temperament are to remain. 
We can never cease to understand the motives and 
value of that to which America owes so much. It 
would seem, therefore, that American Christianity must 
allow for, appreciate, and adopt whatever is true, and 
therefore permanent, in Protestantism. It must ever 
show those special aspects of Christian truth which 

^ Nothing said here is inconsistent with recognizing the Catholic 
position of the English Church, although it is intended to imply 
the distinctly Protestant elements in that Church. The English 
Bible A^dth all its formative influence in America, represents the 
working of Protestant influences in the Catholic Church of England. 



84 IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 

it has been the function of Protestantism to empha- 
size. Whatever be the changes of the future, whereby 
what belongs merely to the last three centuries will 
sink into its place of due subordination to what 
belongs to the greater past and to succeeding times, 
the mark of those centuries has been made on this 
country in a way which is indelible. Positive prin- 
ciples of any movement survive long after the dis- 
appearance of negations. It is the positive side of 
Protestantism which deserves to survive and will sur- 
vive; and this country is one of the places where that 
survival is most certain. 

American religious life will show that individuality, 
that spiritual freedom, which is the most characteris- 
tic thing in Protestantism. Individuality and freedom 
are as old as the faith itself, were made explicit in St, 
Paul and never wholly obscured; but emphasis of 
these truths in modern times has been so especially 
the work of Protestantism, that they may be assigned 
as special ground for distinction. It is inconceivable 
that with its background of Protestant association 
American Christianity can ever fail to allow due recog- 
nition of the principle of individualism, or that any 
body of American Christians should wish to ignore 
it. There is striking illustration of this in the Roman 
Catholics of America. They have conceptions of 
spiritual liberty, of individual freedom in the Church, 
of individual responsibility, which differentiate them 
from their coreligionists in other countries. "Ameri- 
canism" is not appreciated at the Vatican; but it 
still flourishes at home. This American quality in 
Roman Catholicism is a result of the Protestant influ- 



IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 85 

ences which affect us all in this part of the world. In 
the same way, in Germany, any one who visits the 
Roman Catholic churches, for example in the great 
Roman Catholic city of Cologne, cannot fail to notice 
an evangelical freshness in the atmosphere which does 
not exist in the churches of Spain or Italy. The reason 
is that the German Roman Catholics have something 
distinctly German about them, a something traceable 
directly to Martin Luther. 

American religious life may also be expected to show 
the spirit of fearless inquiry and criticism. America 
is committed to modern ideals of education, to the 
principles of a scientific age. Its habit of mind is 
inductive; it wishes to experiment for itself, and 
to subject all canons of authority to rigorous tests. 
Together with England and Germany, America is so 
far committed to the intellectual standards of modern 
science and research, that its religious life can never 
subside into blind submission to authority, much less 
to any process of obscurantism. No matter what its 
source, Christianity on American soil must be open- 
minded to all new presentations of even the oldest 
truths, and must be thorough-going in its critical 
researches. It will be first evangelical, and second 
rational; and though it avoid excesses of fanaticism 
and sceptical destructiveness, it will still show those 
qualities which preeminently characterized the leaders 
of the Reformation. In Germany, France, and Eng- 
land, Roman Catholic scholars have higher standards 
of learning and criticism than their colleagues in Italy 
and Ireland, because they have felt the invigorat- 
ing uplift of the intellectual atmosphere of northern 



86 IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 

Europe. Without ceasing to be Roman Catholics they 
have appropriated what came to them from a non- 
Roman CathoHc source. So in American Christianity 
there must be correspondence with the standards of 
intelligence and education of the country. Average 
intelligence may not be high, average education, super- 
ficial; but the standards of intelligence and education 
have been placed as high as the highest; and all Amer- 
ican Christians would agree that there must be recog- 
nition of this in the country's religious life. 

American Christianity must also be frankly utili- 
tarian in its adaptation to modern needs. The Ameri- 
cans pride themselves in being a practical people. 
Possibly they lack sentiment and imagination, and 
may fail to recognize some forms of utility: but the 
desire for what is practically useful is a healthy one. 
In religion as in all else they wish to have an elastic 
adaptability. It would never be possible for them to 
adopt the Eastern Orthodox ideal of immobility, a 
sort of shuddering terror of anything more recent 
than St. John Damascene. They need to cultivate 
reverence for the achievements of the past and the 
faculty of learning from the world's experience; but 
they need not fear or apologize for that aspect of the 
practical wisdom which wastes no time in experiment- 
ing with what has ceased to be useful. It is a virtue, 
not a vice, to show wholesome impatience with the 
obsolete. American Christianity must certainly aim 
at being practical and abreast of the times. It can 
never develop a spirit of mere mechanical subordina- 
tion, and has forever passed the stage in which men can 
ignore personality in the religious life. It knows that 



^ 



IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 87 

the Christian army is composed of men, not machines; 
though it needs reminder that soldiers have by exercise 
of the highest personal qualities to learn to act like 
machines, and that they cannot all of them be major- 
generals. But in its life there must always be that 
which corresponds to the healthy life of a growing 
organism; and it will never be possible to force Ameri- 
can Christianity into moulds which plainly belong to 
places and times remote. American Christians of 
every name would agree that the Christianity which 
alone can satisfy the needs of our people, and which 
can be trusted as having a mission for the world, is 
one which displays in the highest degree the freedom 
and flexibility which we value as crowning products 
of American life. Thus will they maintain the tradi- 
tions of the Protestant fathers by whom the foundations 
of the State were laid. 



Ill 

These three things, individual freedom in the faith, 
freedom for research and discussion in religious educa- 
tion, free adaptation of the Church to new and changing 
needs, represent a religious ideal for America, fostered 
by its heritage from Protestants, but equally dear to 
American Catholics. In distinguishing Catholicism 
and Protestantism, it is not implied that Protestantism 
has discovered any truth unknown to the Catholic 
Faith, nor that there is irreconcilable contradiction 
between the positive principles of the two. The opposi- 
tions of the past may give place in future to a harmony 
which shall best preserve all for which the contrasted 



88 IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 

types have striven. Yet for the protection and develop- 
ment of that which is pecuharly dear to the American 
soul, there is need of a breadth of apprehension and 
height of aspiration which belong alone to the Catholic 
Faith, the religion for the world, which has its source 
in Almighty God. The American religion of the 
future cannot be confined either in Greek cerements 
of the sixth century, or in Italian trammels and trap- 
pings of the thirteenth, or in English, Scottish, and 
German moulds of the sixteenth, or in nineteenth- 
century ruts, even though they were formed in America. 
It must have what is true and useful from all sources; 
but there must be clearer representation than in any- 
thing we now have of that which can include them all, 
the Catholic Church, which belongs to every place and 
time because it belongs to eternity. The great prin- 
ciples of the mystical Body and Bride of Christ can 
never be ignored. 

These principles must be apprehended and adopted 
by American Christians, if they are to bring their 
national honour and glory within the gates of the City 
of God. They especially need these principles for the 
realization of their own possibilities. To the nations 
of northern Europe the Church was nurse in infancy, 
teacher during adolescence, the chief influence in 
developing national possibilities. In retrospect may 
be seen how much each of them owed to the training 
thus received. In our own case there is the same 
need. Never did a people offer more obvious scope 
for the educative and regulative influence of the 
Catholic Church, the Body of Christ belonging to all 
the world, which can supplement and correct what is 



IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 89 

merely transient and national. America must appro- 
priate the faith and principles of the Catholic Church, 
not only because she must do justice to the part 
played in national life by citizens belonging to Catholic 
communions, but also for the sake of counteracting 
tendencies which threaten her normal growth and 
influence. 

American life, national and religious, must show 
social coherence and subordination as a means of 
unification. We start with individualism. We have 
individualism and individuality. All our political 
institutions represent political individualism, which 
is democracy. The special danger of democracy, 
the final consequence of unguarded individualism, is 
anarchy. We have more than our share of that. 
More and more we need the safeguard of the corporate 
principle in life to correct one-sided tendencies; more 
and more we need the philosophy of society and the 
gospel of the Church for the security of highest indi- 
vidual development. Much of our life is like the sky-" 
line of lower New York, made of big things, high things, 
useful things, all of them, some of them beautiful things, 
but huddled together without reference to each other 
by men each of whom was doing that which was right 
in his own eyes, but with no regard for the eyes of other 
people; making a jumble of uneven tops, ill-assorted 
frontsides and backsides, which, though it represent 
the useful activity of a great people and is composed 
of parts each good in itself, is as a whole the ugliest 
thing in the way of skyline which any great city can 
show, and presents a mammoth muddle in place of 
what ought to be municipal magnificence. It may 



90 IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 

be made admirable some day. The lower end of 
Manhattan Island may sometime be as beautiful and 
impressive as it is now pathetically amusing: but that 
can only be when the component parts of its com- 
mercial stone-piles have been related, supplemented, 
harmonized and unified, when this Protestantism in 
architecture has been Catholicized. That may be 
done. It is conceivable that adjacent buildings should 
be so related to each other as to form an harmonious 
whole, that uniformity of height and a facing of quays 
should make the spectacle of the American metropoUs, 
which first faces the stranger brought to our shores, 
a parable of the united strength, wisdom, and taste of 
a mighty people, instead of being, as it is now, mere 
illustration of what big things Americans can do, but 
also of what extraordinarily queer and haphazard ways 
they have of doing them. We sometimes do things 
better than this. The national Capital, actual and 
prospective, is an illustration. The original plans for 
the City of Washington, and those recently adopted 
for its beautification, represent the comprehensiveness 
of view and subordination of detail which our national 
problems most need: and this sort of thing in the 
religious sphere is given by the conception of the 
Catholic Church. We need the sense of the King- 
dom of God for the preservation of the Republic. All 
that America stands for can only be guaranteed by 
that corporate sense which thinks of the nation as a 
whole, and rises from consciousness of the nation to 
consciousness of the brotherhood of the race; and 
this conception comes to us chiefly from the Church 
of Christ. The central thought of the Church's faith 



IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 91 

is that of the presence and spiritual activity of our 
Lord, Who is not a mere figure, dear but dim, in ancient 
history, but the one great present Reahty. If we wish 
to be abreast of the times, we shall be filled with this 
faith and hope. The cry of the hour, as of the ages, 
is for fuller realization of the Living Christ, fuller 
appreciation of the life of the Living Church. This 
thought of eternal life, of present vigor and action, 
makes an especial appeal to the American zest for 
realizing present opportunities. This is the very 
heart of the Catholic Faith, which combines perma- 
nent and variable, oldest truth with newest needs. 

There are three watchwords to which every Ameri- 
can heart responds. Freedom, Sympathy, Variety. 
These things we seek in our social and national life; 
these things we wish in the Church. We also speak 
much of Unity, but perhaps we fail often to think 
long enough, and feel deeply enough, to know what 
Unity means. We ought also to take account of the 
significance of the New Testament word Fulness. In 
our Lord "dwelleth all the fulness of God" ; the 
Church is "the fulness of Him that fiUeth all in all" : 
"of His fulness have we received," and we may "all 
be filled with all the fulness of God": the "fulness of 
the nations" will come whenever teachers come "in 
the fulness of the Gospel." This thought is puzzling, 
perhaps, but it serves to express the idea of a compre- 
hensive faith for a composite people. This is precisely 
what is meant by the Catholic Faith of the Catholic 
Church, the faith in all the harmony of its complete- 
ness for all the nations of the world. Our aspirations 
may be vague: but if they be sincere, time may make 



92 IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 

them definite and explicit. Who can tell what answer 
God may give in response to a nation's prayer? 



IV 

There are limitations and unsatisfactorinesses in all 
existing presentations of Christianity; yet all express 
partial truth, and by making the most of this, we shall 
be guided further. Impatient idealists may be tempted 
to abandon a Church which does not wholly satisfy 
them, possibly to try to form a new one: but such can 
never discover the One Church, nor find their way 
into it, by adding to the number of sects. We hope 
for better things in future, that the duty of our grand- 
children in regard to the Catholic Church of Christ 
may be less perplexing than our own, that in our own 
country much may be done to further the cause of 
Christian Unity. Here where we have the whole 
Christian world represented among our friends and 
neighbors, it would seem possible that there should 
be that frankness of statement and sympathy of at- 
tention which scarcely ever fails to lead to better 
understanding, to disclosure of unsuspected agreements 
and to lessening of differences. Comparison of views 
often leads to discovery of unsuspected allies. As has 
been often noted, the lines of separation between 
Christians are now not so much vertical as horizontal. 
The lines which separate party from party within a 
Church, or body from body within divided Christen- 
dom, count for less than the plane which separates 
those in various bodies who are working their way 
toward more definite apprehension of Christianity 



I 



IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 93 

from those who are drifting away from it altogether. 
Those moving in the same direction are aUies, since 
separation in place and difference in method are com- 
patible with common effort to attain the same end. 

In the bewilderment in which we find ourselves as 
we think of the confusions in the Christian world, it 
is useful to be reminded of certain practical duties in 
regard to which there can be no doubt. For one thing, 
there is always helpfulness in confessions of short- 
comings. Penitence is the condition of progress; and 
individuals and religious bodies can do something by 
full and frank confessions of failures. There is always 
helpfulness also in a longing for the truth. Any one 
striving for guidance and praying for light is not 
only in the way of advance, but is working effectively 
for others. There is helpfulness also in content with 
making small contributions along right lines. The 
special work given us to do may seem inconclusive, 
unsatisfactory. It may well be both, and yet not 
without value. It may not represent a fraction of 
what ought to be done, or of what we wish to do: but 
it may be all well enough as far as it goes and be swell- 
ing the grand total of fruitful effort. So long as we 
can be confident — and of this we may be — that 
what work we do is on some line plainly in accord with 
our Lord's Will, whether we can see or not how it is 
to be fitted into the symmetrical whole of the work 
of the Church, or whether we can see our coworkers 
in the task, we may leave it all with the One Master 
Who knows His servants, whether or not they recog- 
nize each other. 

We are here assembled in a place dedicated to God 



94 IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 

by the name of one who was as perfect an example as 
we know of the faith and love that comes from Christ. 
"The disciple whom Jesus loved" certainly knew, if 
any one ever knew, all that is involved in personal 
relation between the soul and its Saviour. No less 
than St. Paul, St. John represents the sturdiness of 
faith, the human side in the process of redemption. 
But he is also the Divine, the Seer, the Mystic, the 
Eagle gazing at the Sun, the one who saw furthest 
into our Lord's eternal purposes, who had the vision 
of all the redeemed in the holy City of God. St. John's 
teaching is the complete presentation of all those 
things which characterize Catholic truth, as he is him- 
self typical example of the Catholic tone and temper. 
The basis of his zeal was burning loyalty to our Lord: 
and as the fiery temperament of the Son of Thunder 
was mellowed and consecrated, he became the Apostle 
of Love, learned to show a tireless patience, and exhib- 
ited a breadth and delicacy of sympathy akin to 
that of God. His name has well been given to this 
place. It personifies an ideal and an ambition, that 
here may be a home for all who might be embraced in 
the capacious love of a St. John. He would well under- 
stand how to bring together all the servants of the One 
Lord, as those who have built this place would wish 
to bring together separated brethren in this country. 
The name of St. John also serves to hold high before 
the eyes of the American people those truths and those 
standards which in the bustle of a materialistic age 
they are most sorely tempted to ignore. It stands 
preeminently for the fundamental truth, **the Word of 
God was made flesh and dwelt among us," and also 



% 



IDEALS OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 95 

for the further and consequent truth, revealed to St. 
John in his vision, that the Son of Man is still to be 
discerned in the midst of the Churches, "and His 
countenance as the sun shineth in his strength. And 
when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as one dead. And 
He laid His right hand upon me, saying unto me. Fear 
not: I am the first and the last. I am He that liveth. 
I was dead: but now am I alive forevermore." "He 
that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith 
unto the Churches." 



APPENDIX 



1 



APPENDIX 

The four papers following were written as Parish 
Studies for the first four numbers of the Trinity Parish 
Record in 1913. They are here reprinted by permis- 
sion of the Editor as illustrating in some detail several 
points touched upon in the papers read before the 
Cathedral Conference. 

THE ONE CHURCH 

We all glibly recite Creeds in which we declare 
belief in One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church; 
but our conceptions of what this means are often vague. 
If actual beliefs were put into words, many of us would 
be more likely to say: "I believe in an Indefinite 
Number of Moral Protestant Congregational Churches." 
Morality, Protestantism, for that matter Indefinite- 
ness, have their places in the universe; but those 
places are not in Creeds. They are excellent as far 
as they go; but they do not go far enough to satisfy 
Christian standards. Our common conceptions are, 
as a rule, formed from below, and represent what is 
solely human. Christian conceptions, on the other 
hand, are all of what comes from above and deal invari- 
ably with the Divine, The Church is from above, 
"the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down from God 
out of heaven." Her Unity, Sanctity, Catholicity, 



100 THE ONE CHURCH 

and ApostoHcIty are such as descend to her from her 
Divine Head. Men have devised things which they 
call by these august names; but the human devices 
are very different from, in some cases contrary to, the 
marks of the Church as they are presented in the teach- 
ing of our Lord and His Apostles. 

The Church appears in human history as a society, 
an organized body of men. It is therefore not un- 
natural that we should seek to make comparisons with 
other societies, armies, guilds, political parties, nations, 
and to try to translate Church History into terms of 
ordinary social organization. The principle under- 
lying this is need of cooperation. "Man is a social 
animal" ; and he cannot escape the necessity of con- 
stant dependence upon, and occasional cooperation 
with, other men. Men, therefore, get together, talk 
together, and work together, the combination of indi- 
viduals involving certain restrictions and rules, the rea- 
sonableness of which all admit, and in the observance 
of which all agree. Common action is determined by 
the common mind. The plan of action may be deter- 
mined by a leader; but he is only leader and spokes- 
man by common consent. In the last analysis it is 
the individual man who has to determine what shall 
be done, not only by himself but also by his fellows 
acting with him in some common capacity. The 
principle determining this social order is that authority 
is delegated from below, that members of the body exist 
before the body is formed, that the existence of the 
body depends upon voluntary union and corporate 
adaptation of its members. 

The Church differs from human societies of this sort 



% 



THE ONE CHURCH 101 

in origin, aim, and fundamental principles. It starts 
not with certain men, feeling certain needs, and con- 
senting to act in common, but with the coming into 
the world of the Son of God. Men did not attach 
themselves to each other; God attached them to Him- 
self. The Church's aim is not mere cooperation of 
men for some common purpose, but the imparting to 
men of a Divine principle of life. It is not merely 
an organization, a human arrangement for convenience, 
but an organism, a creation of God as instrument and 
expression of life. It is analogous, as is suggested in 
Scripture, to the family and the vine. God created 
Adam and Eve with power to reproduce their kind. 
In Adam the race existed first; individual men only 
exist as the race and race-principle call them into 
being. Human nature has its source in the love of 
God and descends to its various sharers by a line of 
successive parents. So of the vine. Its character, 
life, is in its stock; this creates leaves and branches. 
In both human family and vegetable organism the 
source of life is from above, and the law of growth 
determined by a principle working within which is 
undiscoverable by natural science. So of the Church. 
It has its source in the love of God the Father, has for 
its Head God the Son, and its life by the indwelling of 
God the Holy Ghost. In origin and law of life it is 
Divine. 

This explains the nature of its Unity. In ordinary 
human societies unity means such unanimity of indi- 
viduals, and such union for common action, as can be 
effected from below. Members unite to form the body; 
and the mind scattered throughout the belly as in 



102 THE ONE CHURCH 

some low forms of insects determines movement of 
the head. Union of individuals, cooperation of 
groups, federation of several bodies, depends upon the 
continued union of innumerable wills. The only 
unification is that of units in mass, the unity of a dust 
heap. This has its necessities and uses, but also obvi- 
ous limitations. The Unity of the Church means more 
than this, though it includes all that this union means. 
It involves unity of thought and will in many indi- 
viduals, cooperation, and federation of groups. It is 
productive of that will to unite, on which human union 
depends, and is therefore fitted to produce the best 
results of unity from below. Yet in its source and 
essential nature it is a unity from above. Our Lord, 
Head and King of the Church, is Centre and Bond of 
Unity. As St. Paul suggests, the unity of the human 
race has its source and centre in Adam; the unity of 
the Jews has its source and centre in Abraham. Simi- 
larly, to the Church our Lord is second Adam, head 
and bond of a new race, and also second Abraham, as 
father of the faithful, who are only united to each other 
through Him. This is also taught by our Lord's 
prayer for the unity of His Church; "that they all 
may be one; as Thou Father art in Me and I in Thee, 
that they all may be one in Us." The pattern as well 
as the source of unity among Christians is the Unity 
of God. The Church cannot create a unity; it can 
only receive it. Its separated parts can no more 
unite themselves than disjointed limbs can come to- 
gether into a body, or leaves, branches, and fruits 
combine to form a vine. Our Lord is the one Head 
"from Whom the whole Body is fitly joined together," 



THE ONE CHURCH 103 

and "the Vine" of which His people are "the branches." 
Unity is only received from Him. 

Plato in one of his Dialogues gives a curious explana- 
tion of poetic inspiration. "The gift (of poetry) is 
not an art but an inspiration; there is a divinity mov- 
ing you like that of the stone which Euripides calls a 
magnet. That stone not only attracts iron rings, but 
also imparts to them similar power of attracting other 
rings; and sometimes you may see a number of pieces 
of iron and rings suspended from one another so as to 
form a long chain; and all of them derive their power 
of suspension from the original stone. Even so the 
god sways the souls of men and makes one man depend 
upon another." Similarly, the "Chief Corner Stone" 
of the Church is a Magnet; and all the parts which 
compose His Body the Church only cohere through 
Divine force derived from Him. Closer unity between 
Him and individual members of His Church alone 
makes possible closer unity between separate members 
with each other. They cannot directly unite, though 
they may be united through Him. This theory taught 
by our Lord HimseK cannot be ignored. The more it 
is meditated upon, the more congruous it is seen to be 
with ultimate facts of experience. It is a Divine 
theory; but it is humanly practical. It is possible 
to bring those who have recei^^ed One Baptism into 
closer sacramental union with the Head of the Church; 
and by so doing we help to effect the unity of the 
Body. 

Unity of the Body follows from the oneness of the 
Head. To lead men to beheve in and to seek the 
Unity of the Church it is necessary first of all to preach 



104 THE ONE CHURCH 

the '^one Lord." In spite of theoretical agreement 
among those who bear the Christian Name in recog- 
nition of one Lord as supreme, the state of the Christian 
world shows practical belief that Christ can be divided. 
The divisions of the Corinthian Church into dissentient 
followers of Paul, ApoUos, and Cephas were as nothing 
compared to the fractions of Christendom today. 
Great sections of the Christian world base their reli- 
gious life on a principle of separation. "Lords many" 
are made of competing leaders of the Church and exal- 
tation of heads of parties and sects has obscured the 
claim of the one Lord Whom all confess. "Our un- 
happy divisions" are due to "not holding the Head, 
from Whom all the body by joints and bands having 
nourishment ministered and knit together, increaseth 
with the increase of God." Sense of the sin of dis- 
union depends upon allegiance to the living Lord, Who 
is crucified by wounds and rents made in His mystical 
Body, and just so far as burning devotion to the Per- 
son of our Divine Saviour is kindled, are Christians 
inflamed with a zeal for unity. 

Belief in the one Lord carries much with it by impli- 
cation. Concentration of spiritual gaze on Him of 
necessity distracts from petty divisions among men and 
removes from the atmosphere in which division is 
possible. Moreover, living faith in Him as Living 
Lord involves acceptance of the sacramental principle. 
He is Himself the great Sacrament. When the Word 
Who was from eternity with God and was God was made 
flesh and dwelt among us, the inward and spiritual 
mystery of the universe was expressed and conveyed 
in an outward sign visible and intelligible to men. To 



THE HOLY CHURCH 105 

believe in the Incarnation is to be prepared to believe 
in the Church and its extension. To beUeve in our 
Lord as God is to accept the mystical conception of 
life and the possible operation of supernatural grace; 
to believe in Him as Man is to acquiesce in the sacra- 
mental possibilities of earthly and material things and 
the possibility of Divine action through human instru- 
mentality. If He is *'of one substance with the Father 
as touching His Godhead and of one substance with 
us as touching His Manhood," the Church united with 
Him may well minister heavenly treasure in earthen 
vessels. Recognition of these applications of the 
sacramental principle cuts out the root of the chief 
causes of divisions; hence may we have confidence in 
every striving for unity which bases itself on intenser 
belief in our Lord as God and Saviour. 



THE HOLY CHURCH 

The Church derives her character from Christ the 
Head, and is, therefore, a Holy Church, a Church whose 
life consists in sharing the nature and activities of God. 
Holiness, which expresses the being and character of 
God, is to be contrasted with mere ideals and achieve- 
ments of men. It is more, for example, than morality, 
more than philanthropy, for these are human products. 
It includes all the best they stand for, but transcends 
them, as being not something laboriously reared by 
men from below, but a gift of God from above. ''As 
many as received Him, to them gave He power to 
become sons of God." The Church's aim is not to 



106 THE HOLY CHURCH 

produce but to receive. She is content with no ordi- 
nary human attainments, not even the highest moral 
eminence. She hungers and thirsts after the righteous- 
ness of God which comes in response to faith, to be 
filled with all the fulness of God, and herself to be 
'*the fulness," that is complete embodiment and expres- 
sion, *'of Him that fiUeth all in all." Though not yet 
actually holy in all parts, since there is admixture of 
human error and frailty with the holiness imparted 
from above, yet in standards, ideals, and in the true 
life which is being gradually realized, the Church is 
Divine. 

Contrast with this what is meant by "morality." 
Morality, by etymology ''custom," is something purely 
human. Men have learned by experience that for 
purposes of self-culture and for purposes of social 
convenience certain customs are desirable. These, 
therefore, are enjoined and imposed. Teachers formu- 
late systems of conduct; and we have codes of morals 
from Hammurabi, Plato, Mohammed, and Confucius. 
These represent as good a science and system of life 
as men by themselves can discover, and are to be 
received with veneration. They represent rules of 
living which tests of time have proven useful, and 
which men's deepest feelings have approved. They 
all contain good, some of them great good: those which 
issue from the experience of cultured and devout peoples 
represent high planes of human conduct. But they 
seldom rise higher than the plane of possible achieve- 
ment of the average man. The moral is essentially 
the conventional; and the conventional does not raise 
the highest standard. It tends, as matter of fact, to 



THE HOLY CHURCH 107 

establish nothing more than an average standard and 
that average comfortably low. Men do not care to 
be righteous overmuch: and the moralities they devise 
represent, on the whole, only very moderate require- 
ments of self-interest and wordly wisdom. They are 
good as far as they go; but they go no farther than 
they have to. Morality is determined primarily by 
considerations of self-interest; and one consideration 
of self-interest is that its requirements shall not be 
too exacting. It is concerned primarily, like that old 
worldling Polonius in his most solemn injunctions, 
with looking out for Number 1, "This above all, to 
thine own self be true; and it must follow as the night 
the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." 
This is specious morality, unctuous, pious; but it falls 
comfortably short of anything like holiness and self- 
sacrifice. 

Philanthropy might be expected to go beyond 
morality, since it is concerned primarily with fellow- 
men. But its standards are not usually higher than 
those of average morahty, since a man is not likely 
to seek for his neighbor what he does not care in 
the first instance to gain for himself. Philanthropic 
standards are derived from moral standards as from a 
stream which cannot rise higher than its source. Hence 
when the aims of self-development are physical ease 
and such culture as conduces to gain or pleasure, 
brotherly kindness will take the form of sharing bodily 
comforts and of surrounding ourselves with those whose 
gay enjoyment of the world reflects the spirit which 
we ourselves wish to possess. We will relieve physical 
distress to be rid of the sight of it, provide sumptuous 



108 THE HOLY CHURCH 

Christmas dinners for the poor, and endow free beds 
whereon they may recover from the eflFects of them. 
Methods of philanthropy may become more and more 
scientific, sane, and sanitary; but they will not rise to 
a high plane so long as food, money, and the theatre 
represent the ideal of success and happiness. Many 
schemes of philanthropy aim at much more than this; 
but it is doubtful whether the philanthropic motive 
by itself can induce a man to do more than share with 
a few, such good things as he has sought and to some 
degree gained for himself. Philanthropy certainly does 
good to him that gives, usually also to him that 
takes; it is excellent as far as it goes: but it does not 
often go far enough. 

*'The pre-Christian religions were an age-long 
prayer: the Incarnation is the answer." Similarly, 
man's moralities, voicing aspirations of mind and 
conscience, and his philanthropies, expressing altruistic 
instincts, represent irrepressible human desires to make 
the best of self and to help fellowmen; they exhibit 
the best of human life as devised and developed from 
below. But it is the life of Christ alone, the exhibition 
of human life as designed and viewed from above, 
which shows a humanity that men recognize as really 
satisfying the instinctive longing after higher things 
which are innate in humanity. In our Lord ideal man 
is exhibited to himself. The diflference between the 
best that humanity can make of itself and the glory 
of the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth, shows 
that the supreme morality and philanthropy are not 
self-evolved. The knowledge of them comes by reve- 
lation; the things themselves come by gift of God. 



THE HOLY CHURCH 109 

Both morality and philanthropy are raised to highest 
terms and guaranteed by the Divine holiness and self- 
sacrifice. Self-culture and neighborly kindness are 
best secured on the basis of love to God; and in the 
Ught of revelation the best that man can achieve in 
independence of God is poles asunder from the righteous- 
ness which God gives. When St. Paul characterizes the 
law and the righteousness which is by the law as "sin," 
he is only emphasizing the contrast between what is 
merely human and what is Divine. But what man 
cannot develop out of himself, he may receive by com- 
munication from God. Our Lord is "the Lamb of God 
WTio taketh away the sin of the world" ; and He is 
"second Adam" Who begets a race of redeemed 
humanity. 

From Him we receive more than teaching. God, 
Who never left Himself without witness, but in every 
race and time inspired sages and philosophers to teach 
men wisdom and kindness, in the fulness of time sent 
His Son to reveal both Divine and human nature 
through inteUigible terms of human life. 

"Tho* truths in manhood darkly join. 
Deep-seated in our mystic frame. 
We yield all blessing to the Name 
Of Him who made them current coin. 

"For Wisdom dwelt with mortal powers. 
Where truth in closest words shall fail, 
When truth embodied in a tale 
Shall enter in at lowly doors. 

**And so the Word had breath and wrought 
With human hands the creed of creeds 
In loveliness of perfect deeds 
More strong than all poetic thought." 



no THE HOLY CHURCH 

By our Lord came truth, revelation about God, about 
man, about life. But by Him also came grace, gift of 
power to realize human possibilities which by nature 
man cannot have. He is more than Example: He is 
Source of human perfection. In teaching this, Chris- 
tianity runs counter to our first impressions and to 
popular teaching. We start with conviction that we 
are able to work out our own salvation, that with half 
a chance we can develop our powers, that we can by 
searching find out ourselves, and, so far as we need 
Him, God. Christianity denies this. Our own search- 
ings can find many things; but the sum of discovery 
is that we are not self-sufficient. To be without God 
in the world is to be without hope. Our Lord showed 
this by displaying a type of humanity which embodies 
more than moral respectabilities, more than philan- 
thropical sentimentalities, and reveals an all-pervading 
love capable of supreme self-sacrifice and finding glory 
and power in pain. On the Cross He exhibited the 
holiness of God in its opposition to the spirit of the 
world, and also the holiness of man in its acceptance of 
the price of obedience. Yet the revelation of God's 
searching requirements would be terrible, were it not 
that our Lord not only shows what man ought to do 
but also gives power to do it. He requires holiness; 
but He gives this by the indwelling of His Holy Spirit. 
*'The mystery of godliness" follows from the mystical 
union of Christ with the members of His Body, the 
Church. 

The Church is the Home of Holiness. Those who 
as members of Christ are sacramentally united with 
Him are infused by spiritual forces. Men may become 



THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 111 

"partakers of the Divine Nature" as the Son Him- 
self derives His being from the Father as Source of 
Godhead. "As the Uving Father hath sent Me, and 
I hve by the Father: so he that eateth Me, even he 
shall hve by Me." Life sacramentally generated has 
as fruits not only decencies of morality and the easy 
good-nature of philanthropy, but also such love and joy 
and peace as only the Spirit of God can give. "He 
was made human that we might be made Divine," 
wrote St. Leo : and St. John gives the gist of Christian 
Ethics when he says, "Herein is love, not that we 
loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to 
be the propitiation for our sins. . . . God is love: 
and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God 
in him." 

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 

The Church of God is intended for all mankind. 
"God willeth all men to be saved; and the only limits 
to the inclusiveness of the Church, which is the instru- 
ment of salvation, are those imposed by the wills of 
men who refuse to accept the grace proflFered them." 
"God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten 
Son." This universalism of Christianity disappointed 
the expectation of the Jews who believed that their 
race had a monopoly of God's favor; and it contra- 
dicts all theories of God's working which would restrict 
His grace to narrow channels, or deny possibility of 
salvation to any race or class of men. The possible 
scope of the Church's influence is as wide as humanity. 

This conception of a Catholic, Universal, Church is 



112 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 

opposed to that of all ancient religions. These were 
cults of families, tribes, and nations, and were restricted 
to men of one blood. A few Greeks dimly dreamed of 
one all-supreme God Who had made of one blood all 
peoples of the earth; but commonly men's sympathies 
did not range beyond the confines of their own special 
class or nation. Rehgious rites and beUefs were the 
exclusive and distinguishing possession of special classes 
of men. Rehgion v/as commonly thought of as a 
family, or at most a national, possession. Among no 
people was the idea of religious exclusiveness more 
strongly held than among the Jews. They were the 
"chosen people," the "elect nation." Their whole 
religious history had impressed on them the necessary 
duty of aloofness from the rest of the world. They 
were taught the special obligations of God's service 
by being kept apart from idolatrous nations round 
about them on the principle implied in our Lord's 
warning to His followers, "Ye are not of the world, 
even as I am not of the world." Exclusiveness for 
the sake of concentration, narrowness for the sake of 
depth, had to be insisted on: but it was a means, not 
an end. The Jews treated their position as one not of 
responsibility but of privilege, not of obhgation but of 
exemption. They knew that God's special promises 
had been given to Abraham, that "salvation was of 
the Jews"; and they could not conceive that the 
religion of Almighty God could be other than Jewish 
in form. They were perfectly willing to receive prose- 
lytes of the gate; but the religion of Jehovah was, 
they believed^ only for Jews and Jew-Gentiles. Though 
they believed their God to be without peer, "There 



THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 113 

is none like Thee among the gods," and came to think 
of Him as Lord of the whole earth, yet their conceptions 
of national religions and national gods did not differ 
essentially from that of other peoples. In spite of 
conviction that Jehovah was Creator of heaven and 
earth, they reasoned that His choice of the Jews as 
recipients of a progressive revelation of Divine truth 
virtually restricted His grace to Jewish channels. 
They regarded themselves not as trustees of spiritual 
blessings for all mankind, but as irresponsible favorites. 
They had to be taught both their own duty and the 
comprehensiveness of God's love and purposes. 

The first Christians, devout Jews by birth and 
training, did not at once rise to higher conceptions. 
They regarded themselves as the elect remnant, the 
true Israel of God, the heirs of the promises made to 
Abraham; but, even with the knowledge that the 
Messiah was a heavenly rather than an earthly King, 
they did not at once see that men might be brought to 
Christ by other than Judaizing processes. Though to 
them reUgion was more than family custom, more 
even than a national cult, since they were familiar with 
the idea of international adoption, yet at first they 
thought only of the extension of Christianity by strictly 
Jewish methods of inclusion. The Church, the Ecclesiay 
was the body called out; and this exclusiveness, neces- 
sary as a means of instruction, was regarded as an 
essential aspect of the body of the redeemed. It was 
St. Paul who first learned and then taught the truth 
that the Church is an Universal Church in which 
Gentiles are fellow-heirs of God's promises side by side 
with Jews. The Church's mission is to all mankind; 
8 



114 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 

its sympathies must be as wide as humanity, its methods 
as varied as the needs of men, its characteristics as 
manifold as those of the nations of the earth. Our 
Lord was the Jewish Messiah; but He was also the 
Catholic Man, the Second Adam, the embodiment of 
ideal humanity. So the Church, His Body, is the 
Catholic Society, the household and family not of 
Abraham but of God, not only *'the general assembly 
and church of the first-born," but also of all ''spirits 
of just men made perfect." It was, in the first instance, 
as against belief in one Jewish, one national. Church, 
that Christians professed belief in one Catholic Church. 
The profession of that belief still serves to oppose any 
restriction of the Church-idea to a special class or 
nation by confronting the narrowness of men with the 
all-embracing love of God. 

In modern times has arisen another antithesis. The 
Catholic Church is contrasted with the Protestant 
Churches. The contrast marks the distinction be- 
tween the religion of the Incarnate Word intended for 
all mankind and the select views of certain sets of people 
who have become conscious of disagreement with some- 
body else. The essence of Catholicism is the thought 
of the human race considered in relation to God; the 
essence of Protestantism is the thought of one's own 
private judgment as distinguished from the private 
judgment of one's immediate neighbors. Private judg- 
ment is a fact; it has its place and function in the 
Christian scheme of redemption; but it is no substitute 
for the revelation of the new creation which comes 
through Jesus Christ. Protestantism is essentially 
individualistic, and serves a useful purpose in so far 



THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 115 

as it insists on individual responsibility, individual 
access to God, and the personal relation between each 
soul and its Personal Saviour. But it errs when it 
confines religion to the individual consciousness and 
tends to restrict religious conceptions to the devices 
of individual mind and feeUng. It rightly insists on 
the human function in the process of salvation, on the 
necessity of the response of faith : but it too often trusts 
to its own initiative and subjects itself to its own in- 
ventions. It is concerned with the lower, earthly side of 
things, and tends to determine everything from below. 
The Catholic Church, like the conception of the 
Catholic Church, cometh down from above. It means 
more than that, as the individual must broaden his 
thought to include the family, so the family conception 
must broaden to the national, and the national to the 
international, tending to sense of kinship with all 
mankind. Man by thinking and feeling may stretch 
himself over a large surface; but his self -evolved 
breadth is necessarily thin. Catholicity means more 
than imaginative breadth of human sympathy. It 
means that conception of humanity and of the whole 
creation which comes from thinking first of God. 
From God, Who fiUeth all in all, all things in the world 
in all conceivable ways, comes that Church which is 
the fulness, the complete expression, of its Divine 
Head. It is from Him that men gain true breadth of 
view and depth of sympathy whereby to realize their 
universal kinship. As love of God lies at the root of 
true love for self and love for neighbor, so the con- 
ception of God's nature and purposes lies at the base 
of world-wide conceptions of humanity and rounded 



116 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 

conceptions of human destiny. Breadth of sympathy 
for all humanity depends on height of aspiration to- 
wards God. Only as by degrees we come to possess 
"the mind of Christ" do we learn the secret of uni- 
versal love. Only as we fathom the depths of Divine 
love, do we learn that the limits of the Catholic Church 
are those of Divine inclusiveness. 

There are many caricatures of CathoUcity. There is 
the theory of acquiescence in rules for the Church 
devised by an Italian oligarchy, j)ax Romanay uni- 
formity of outward observance; there is the assumed 
indifference to divisions between Protestants which 
would produce civility at the expense of sincerity, 
unanimity in the avoidance of burning questions; 
there is the harking back to past ages and irrevocable 
conditions on the theory that we can let some bygones 
be bygones, if we take other bygones as beginnings; 
there is enthusiastic applause of all novel doctrines, 
especially such as contradict the fundamental articles 
of the Christian faith; there is habitual disparagement 
of strictly conscientious persons, a sentimental devotion 
to criminals, an emphasis on the virtues of vice, and a 
passionate demand for belief in the salvation of the 
dear old Devil, universalism: all of which call them- 
selves "Catholicity." But these are not ideas of St. 
Paul and St. John, nor have they sanction in the teach- 
ing of our Lord! 

The Catholic Church, as distinct from individual, 
congregational, local, national religious cults, and as 
transcending the noblest human efforts to realize 
universal brotherhood, is the mystical Body of Christ, 
whose whole life is sacramental, whose extension is by 



THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH 117 

sprinkling of One Baptism, which includes all who do 
not wilfully refuse the invitation of Divine Love. 
"Whosoever will, let him come." "One touch of 
nature makes the whole world kin," and one touch of 
grace makes that whole kin one. As souls are touched 
with sense of sin and surrender themselves to the 
saving sacraments of the one Saviour, they are included 
in that body of the redeemed and make contribution 
to the character of that body from which nothing 
human is alien. There is need of form, organization, 
lower activities; but the true character of Church- 
membership is not realized without that sacramental 
conception of the Church and of life which relates the 
admission into earthly fellowship to the writing of 
names in the Lamb's Book of Life. 

THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH 

The Church which is One, because it consists of 
those who are united to One Lord Who is Divine; 
which is Holy, because it shares the Divine life; which 
is Catholic, because it is inspired by Divine love and 
compassion for all humanity; this Church, Divine in 
its Head and Centre, in its character, and in its motive 
and scope, is also Divine in its work and in its authority. 
It is Apostolic, that is, sent and commissioned by God, 
for the purpose of continuing "all that Jesus began 
both to do and to teach." 

It is natural to assume that a Church of this mystical 
character would have received a solemn commission 
in the Name of God; and according to the Gospel 
narratives such a commission was given. Our Lord 



118 THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH 

spoke of Himself as the embodiment of authority. 
"All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth/' 
Then followed His commission to the Church, "Go ye 
therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them into 
the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the 
Holy Ghost; and lo, I am with you always even unto 
the end of the world." In these words are implied 
two things, our Lord's mission of the Church, and His 
perpetual presence in the Church, both involving the 
idea of authority delegated by God. In His earthly 
ministry He inaugurated a double work of revelation 
and redemption, of teaching men about God and of 
saving them from sin; and this work He continues, 
working by His Spirit through His mystical Body the 
Church. Reigning as King in heaven He discharges 
functions of Prophet and Priest; and in His Name the 
Church exercises royal authority for the purpose of 
mediating grace and truth. The Church has to teach 
and to baptize, to discharge a ministry of Word and 
Sacrament, ruling minds for the sake of illuminating 
them and souls for the sake of sanctifying them. There 
can be neither teaching nor training without exercise 
of authority; and to justify this it is necessary that 
there be guarantee of commission from God both to 
those who wish to receive grace and truth from Christ 
and to those who wish to work in Christ's Name. No 
man could assume right to speak and act for God, 
though he may humbly try to discharge such a respon- 
sibility, if without assumption of his own it be laid 
upon him. This is the principle which underlies the 
Church's belief in an Apostolic Ministry. Given belief 
in the continuous activity of our Lord, now as formerly 



THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH 119 

reaching men through the instrumentality of other 
men, it is possible to believe in a Divinely commissioned 
ministry of ''ambassadors of Christ and stewards of 
the mysteries of God." Perpetual commission from 
Christ and perpetual inspiration by Christ are credible 
to those who believe in the perpetual work of Christ 
supernaturally present in His Church. Belief in the 
delegation of Divine authority to the Church and its 
Ministry has not been due to the inventive imagina- 
tion of Christians of later days, but to the express words 
and promises of our Lord Himself, "Receive ye the 
Holy Ghost; whosesoever sins ye remit, they are 
remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, 
they are retained." This signifies Divine mission for 
share in a Divine work of redemption, the Divine work 
requiring a Divine commission quite as truly as the 
Divine commission implies a Divine work. 

The principle of authority in the Church is opposed 
by all forms of individualism. Individualism recog- 
nizes no authority except such as is self-evolved, being 
democratic because democracy seems to be an exten- 
sion of autocracy, and sometimes theocratic for the 
same reason. Vox Populi is the same as Vox Dei, 
because Vox Mei is assumed as a middle term. "I 
am one of the people; therefore the voice of the people 
is my voice; and this being the case, I recognize the 
voice of the people as the Voice of God. If the Voice 
of God expresses my opinions, I bow to It as infallible." 
But if the individual mind and will be independent and 
supreme, there are as many independent supremacies 
as individuals. Pure individualism, irrational in its 
assumptions, is also, therefore, anarchic in its results. 



120 THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH 

Individualism lies at the heart of the Protestant 
creed, "I disbelieve in the religion of everybody else." 
Since this denies external authority and suspects con- 
ceptions which transcend its intelligence, its church- 
government naturally takes the form of domination 
from below. During the Middle Ages there developed 
in the Western Church an idea of clerical caste and a 
clerical tyranny which called for reform even by revo- 
lutionary methods. The tyranny was intolerable; 
and there was need of insisting that in all that concerns 
the Church there must be cooperation of the laity, 
since the clergy only discharge representative functions 
for the body of the Church as a whole. But in the 
reaction of the sixteenth century there was often, 
instead of reform of authority misused, a defiance of 
all authority and the overthrow of much that promoted 
the welfare of the Church. Reaction from clerical 
tyranny often established lay-tyranny, less defensible 
in theory and more disastrous in fact. Abuse of 
authority by some of the men who have been trained 
and commissioned for its exercise is not remedied by 
assuming that authority can only be safely entrusted 
to those who have had no such training and no such 
commission. Yet this anomaly has frequently been 
illustrated by developments in modern times. Revolt 
against misused authority in the Church has often 
involved not only defiance of false priests and false 
prophets but also virtual rejection of the authority 
of our Lord Himself. The revolt against authority 
has been general. Private judgment has in all spheres 
arrogated to itself an impossible supremacy. In schools 
it often seeks to subject teachers and curricula to 



THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH 121 

pupils, in politics legislators to the least fit of voters, 
in courts judges to the most vacant-minded juries, in 
homes parents to their spoiled children. 

"Tumble Nature heel o'er head, and yelling with the yelling street. 
Set the feet above the brain and swear the brain is in the feet." 

Freedom has been caricatured by the license of self- 
will and ignorance. Not only has there been suspicion 
of any claim to rule in God's Name, but also scant 
regard for the authority of God Himself. 

Against this principle of anarchy the CathoUc Church 
maintains the principle of freedom through obedience. 
It views all life as corporate and organic. It is con- 
scious of the living Christ and of man's constant need 
of grace. This consciousness leads to belief in the 
working of the Holy Spirit in a Church not man-devised 
but God-ordered; and the acceptance of this principle, 
Apostolicity, is but acceptance of what is involved in 
our Lord's assertion, "As My Father hath sent Me, 
even so send I you." The Apostolic Church, sent by 
God and inspired by God to continue the redeeming 
and sanctifying work of His Son and Spirit, can only 
be defined in terms of the Divine Nature; and its 
methods of working are also Divine. The kingdom of 
God Cometh from above. It is radically wrong to try 
to reduce it to terms of mere human nature and secular 
politics and to identify it with efforts at self-govern- 
ment such as we make in secular affairs. If this be 
done, it ceases to be Church, Ecclesia, the body of 
those "called out" from the world to be in closer touch 
with God. A distinguished teacher has said that every 
church-spire represents a mark of interrogation, the 



122 THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH 

irrepressible inquiry of man concerning the Being and 
nature of God. In a sense this is true. On the human 
side, the Church represents humanity by a law of its 
being struggling upward toward light. But in another 
and more important sense church-spires stand, or ought 
to stand, for affirmation, not so much for the fact of 
man's queries as for the definite answer God has given 
to them. "Not that we loved God, but that He loved 
us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation of our sins." 
"We love Him, because He first loved us." The 
conception of the interrogatory character of the Church 
unrelated to its affirmative character cannot be re- 
garded as entirely Christian. 

"And one of the angels talked with me, saying, Come 
hither and I will show thee the Bride, the Lamb's Wife. 
And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and 
high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the 
holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, 
having the glory of God; and her light was like unto 
a stone most precious, even like a jasper-stone, clear 
as crystal; and had a wall great and high, and had 
twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names 
written thereon, which are the names of the twelve 
tribes of Israel: on the east three gates; on the north 
three gates; on the south three gates; on the west 
three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve 
foundations, and in them the names of the twelve 
apostles of the Lamb." 

There is a vision of the Church's ideal. It is One, 
unique, and incomparable as coming from God; it is 
Holy, "having the glory of God," the hght, purity, and 



THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH 123 

strength of the most precious crystals; it is CathoKc, 
having gates on every side affording easy access to 
those who approach God from every quarter; it is 
ApostoHc, having as foundations the faith of those 
who beheving in Jesus as Son of God were sent forth 
to win the world in His Name. 

It cannot be maintained that the ideal is, or ever 
has been, even approximately realized in any fraction 
of the Christian world. But now, as in all ages of the 
Church's history, there are many holy souls who are 
seeking more and more the reality of the Divine Church, 
because they believe in the Divine Saviour. The two 
beliefs stand or fall together. Those who have rejected 
the idea of the Church as anything more than human 
organization have also rejected, or are plainly in way 
of rejecting, the conception of Jesus as more than 
human teacher. On the other hand, those who have 
believed, and do believe, in our Lord as ''very God of 
very God, being of one substance with the Father" 
are able to conceive of His Divine activity among and 
through men, though "we have this treasure in earthen 
vessels." "Whom say ye that I am? And Simon 
Peter answered and said. Thou art the Christ, the son 
of the Living God. And Jesus answered and said 
unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon bar-Jona: for flesh 
and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My 
Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, 
that thou art Peter — Man of Rock — and upon this 
rock — of faith like thine — I will build My Church; 
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 



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